Chapter Two
The man stepped forward gracefully, his sword gleaming in the moonlight. The young girl stumbled backward, her mind racing for a way to escape, but she came up blank again and again; there seemed to be no way out. Behind the killer, the bodies of her parents lay sprawled on the ground in twin pools of blood, their unseeing eyes wide with shock and fear.
“Why,” she shouted, trying to distract the man. “Why do you do this?”
He laughed, a cruel sound that chilled her to the bone and frightened her badly as well. “Because of what you might become.” His voice rasped roughly with the age evident in his face, in contrast to the flowing ease of his movements. “The others do not see the danger, but I have dreamed of it; I know, and shall thwart it. I, the last Seer among the Traon, know what will happen if you are not stopped. The Clans shall not return! I will not allow it!”
He raised his sword high over his head for the blow that would cleave her in two, and her eyes fell once again on her lifeless parents. In that moment, walls of fear and confusion seemed to fall away within her mind, crystallizing her thoughts. Anger such as she had never known surged through her, and she glared at the murderer with burning eyes, hating now instead of fearing. Everything seemed clearer and sharper, as though a fog had lifted; power coursed through her veins.
The man’s sword quivered, on the point of coming down, and she knew she was going to die, knew and did not care. Strangely, however, he seemed to pause, hesitating. The blade quivered again, seeming caught between two opposing forces, and without knowing why she willed it to turn on its master. Pushing at it with her mind, she forced it to yield, imposing her will in a way she had never done before.
The sword flew upward, out of the man’s grasp, and shock appeared on his face, a shock that she recognized but could not feel herself. Still willing with her mind, she moved the sword up further, then turned it and sent it arrowing downward. The Seer, as he had called himself, gazed at her with horror and sudden understanding, opening his mouth to scream as the blade plunged into him—
Trisha jerked awake with a gasp of horror and sat up, trembling. She had revisited that terrible night many times over the years, but it always terrified her, because she did not understand and could not explain what had happened. The fog of sleep still lay heavily upon her mind, and for a moment she considered simply lying back down and drifting off.
But if she went back to sleep, the nightmares would only come again.
The air outside was fresh, and it cleared her head. As she walked, Trisha decided to find out what had happened that night so long ago, when she was only six years old; perhaps that would stop these terrible dreams. Normally, she wouldn’t have even considered it—what she thought to try was dangerous, and insane besides—but she was tired and the night was perfect, cool but not cold.
Trisha walked straight out of the village, slipping through the shadows and glancing around nervously; she did not want to be seen while she tried this, for fear of how others would react. Once free of the houses, she headed toward the nearby rock formations where the children sometimes played, even though they weren’t allowed to.
Taking a deep breath, she sat cross-legged on one of the scattered boulders and searched around until she found what she wanted: a plain gray rock about the size of her fist, partially covered in clinging moss and somewhat smooth.
If she was honest with herself, Trisha had to admit that she didn’t really expect it to move, but it still felt good to test it, to finally prove to herself that what she remembered either had or had not happened. She glared at the rock she had chosen, and her sight seemed to become clearer and sharper, just as it had so long ago. She could see small faults, tiny splashes of color, and holes and scratches she usually didn’t notice.
The rock moved.
Trisha jerked backward in shock, blinking hard and rubbing her eyes to see if it had been a trick of the light, but now there was no denying the obvious truth; it had definitely shifted. Hardly daring to breath, she leaned forward and stared at it intently, willing it to rise.
Slowly, the stone jerked into the air, stopped, and jerked up again. It stayed there for a moment, hovering, and she felt more alive than could remember, except for that one time almost six years ago. Smiling, she laughed, delighted at her success, and the rock suddenly dropped as her attention on it wavered; the sound of it striking the ground made her jump, then shake her head at her own foolishness.
She could do this, learn to control this power. With practice, she could master it and begin use it—in secret of course, where no one could see her and judge her. But she could do this, and finally be able to protect others; if those Traon came looking for their Seer, she could stop them from hurting the family she had now.
As long as she was around, her people would be safe. No one, no one, would ever hurt them again.
The young boy gazed at his collection of earthen dishes, crafted by him for the most part, and held up one hand, concentrating as he curled his fingers and turned his wrist. The bowl he was focusing on shivered and, even though it was sun-baked mud, twisted around the water inside it to re-form into a cup, somehow doing so without spilling a single drop. He smiled slightly; his skill was improving.
At that moment his mother burst into the room, and he quickly dropped his hand. As he did so, he sensed that something was wrong; although her expression was calm, her eyes were filled with wild panic.
“Come, Luke,” she ordered, her voice revealing a terror that he had never heard from her before. “We don’t have time to waste.” She grabbed his arm and forcibly dragged him from the house, her grip painfully tight.
Outside, the boy saw that everyone was hurrying from their homes and down the street, some carrying belongings, others empty-handed. Noise prevailed, a mishmash of arguments, weeping, and panicked instructions assailing him from all sides. “Asmór have been spotted nearby,” his mother explained, tripping over her words in her haste, “and the nearest group of Nashtan soldiers is too far away to help. They’re intent on raiding the town, nothing more. With luck, we can escape them.”
“But, Mama, they’ll destroy everything,” Luke protested over the clamor, having heard stories of other towns and villages ravaged by the war. “I’ve got things I’d like to save—”
A shout came from the edge of the small town, freezing everyone where they stood and silencing the babble of voices. A second later, there was a scream from the same direction, and people began to run in every directions as they panicked; Luke, confused and frightened, stayed where he was. Mere seconds later, uniformed troops appeared—not in the gleaming colors of the Royal Army, but the dull grays and browns of Asmór. While most of them had swords and shields in hand, advancing steadily, one of them, a few yards in front of the rest and dressed very differently, fitted an arrow to his bow and sighted along it with practiced ease before releasing. Instinctively recognizing its path, Luke threw himself to one side with lightning reflexes, dodging the arrow.
Instead, it struck his mother.
Her hand flew to the shaft embedded in her chest even as she fell, and time seemed to freeze momentarily. He gazed at her clouded eyes and still face and knew she was dead, dead because he had moved, dodging the arrow meant for him. Dead because, where others ran, he had hesitated, delaying them both. She was dead, and it was his fault—his, and the Asmór who had killed her.
Pain such as he had never known filled the boy. He was only eight, yet as he turned he felt decades older, ancient with sorrow and loss. New life seemed to course through him, a burning energy, and he raised his hand in a motion he had done a hundred times before, but never really meant.
The earth at the feet of the approaching soldiers tore open with a roar. Out of the gaping hole rushed waves of water from deep within the group, knocking down the first few ranks and pulling them into the endless pit. Fire erupted all around, crisping soldiers where they stood, and screams and shouts tore the air. As the ground shuddered together once more, following his confused and clouded thoughts, exhaustion weighed him down, and he collapsed.
His last thought before darkness came was that the other people would have time to escape now.
Michael sensed something was wrong just before a part in the path that was overshadowed by towering trees, darkening it almost to blackness. Unheard voices seemed to call out from all around him, warning of great danger, and he felt a terrible sense of foreboding. He paused, drawing back—but it was too late.
A shadow detached itself from the darkness ahead and struck out at him with a blur of liquid gray and gleaming black, faster than he could react. The thing bit deep into his arm, and he fell onto the ground with a cry of pain that sounded deadened to his own ears. Michael twisted away, feeling something solid pull out of his arm; the wound throbbed like fire, and blood spattered into the dust as the boy scrambled upright to face his assailant.
Looking like a roughly human-shaped piece torn from a starless night sky, a being stood before him. In one hand it held a bloodied sword with a black hilt; the other was hidden in the darkness of what he now realized was its cloak. It raised the blade again, striking with terrible speed, and scored a line of pain across the boy’s side, making him scream again. The ground wavered before him, blurring, and he stumbled backward, feeling dizzy. He tried to speak, but numbness was spreading through him, and he knew he was going to die.
An arrow sprouted in the creature’s shoulder, accompanied by triumphant voices both in his head and from behind. The creature hissed and snapped the shaft contemptuously, seeming to absorb the metal point, and Michael felt a dim surge of panic. Then another dart sprouted from it, followed closely by three more, and he heard muffled footsteps on the path behind him as the creature shrieked a terrible cry and retreated back into the trees.
He wasn’t aware that he had collapsed again until someone bent over him and grasped his arm, causing him to groan faintly. The agony was the only thing he could feel clearly, and it was terrible.
“He’s hurt bad,” a distant voice called. “The Flicker’s blade was poisoned, of course; we must get him to camp quickly, or he will die.”
Blackness seemed to be creeping up on him, but he didn’t mind. Death would be peaceful, not at all like the agony lancing through him, and he could see his father again. But he couldn’t die, not yet. His mother and sisters were depending on him to come back, and he had promised to protect them . . .
Just before he succumbed to the venom spreading through him, Michael caught glimpse of a man in a dull gray and brown tunic holding a weapon like a bladed staff in one hand.
The young soldier led his patrol through the woods, senses on the alert for an attack. Even though nothing seemed out of place, he felt uncomfortable, as though some sixth sense were warning him of danger. Without any cause, he called a halt and glanced around nervously. The wind was blowing, birds were singing, animals rustling—and something was wrong.
A flash of color caught his eye, gray where there was no shadow.
“Ambush!” Juilin yelled, wheeling his horse around. “Back to camp and sound the alarm!”
His men scattered and Asmór appeared from the trees, determined to stop their escape. Juilin threw himself from the saddle and let his horse bolt in order to engage the closest foe, a man much older than him but not nearly as skilled. Coolly, the captain swung his sword in a feint, then brought it around at a near-impossible speed to kill the man. Seeing some of his men hesitate, he cried with more force than usual, “Forget about me, just go!”
With obvious reluctance, they fled in the direction of the camp, where the alarms could already be heard. One of the Asmór fitted an arrow to his bow and raised it, aiming for the retreating soldiers, but Juilin leapt forward and sliced through his string with a quick stroke.
At that moment, while the archer was stumbling backward in a desperate attempt to escape him, Juilin felt every nerve on his body scream of danger. He dropped his sword and stepped away, his eyes locked on a shadowy place among the trees.
The archer froze as well when a tall man stepped out of the darkness, then fled, leaving Juilin alone with the newcomer. He seemed to glow faintly, even though his tunic was a dark red mingled with black. The stranger’s pale eyes swept him calmly, and Juilin noticed suddenly, without knowing why it was important, that he had a silver scabbard on his belt. Something about the man himself, though, seemed . . . wrong. Juilin was utterly bewildered, but a suspicion was filtering through the layers of blank shock that surrounded his mind. This man looked, somehow, like the raiders who had killed his parents . . .
The stranger raised his hand as though in greetin and a deep, fiery pain jolted through him. Juilin gasped for breath, barely managing to keep his feet, and snatched the sword from the ground.
“Courageous, boy, but foolish indeed.”
That voice was almost worse than the agony ripping through him. It spoke of despair and death, flooding his mind with images of destruction and terror. Cities burned and battles raged before his eyes; objects flew through the air with the gesture of a hand, and the earth itself seemed to come alive. Vines and plants twisted around people, ripping them apart, and animals attacked without visible command, all in silent motion, without a sound to mark the vicious fighting.
Then the images changed and, quite suddenly, he was looking through someone else’s eyes.
He saw a gleaming white city that seemed to radiate evil and malice below him, with cloaked figures crossing the glowing streets almost furtively. There was a deathly silence about the place, though he could not understand at first. Then, as he listened further, he understood. No birds sang, no animals moved, in that forbidding place. But for the few people moving in the deserted streets, it was lifeless and barren, though still filled with an impossible and terrible beauty.
In a moment the vision was gone, replaced by another of a dying soldier. The man gasped for breath, then whispered, “I . . . will never tell. My . . . my life . . . is soon over. You . . . will . . . never know . . . then.” A hand came into Juilin’s view and touched the soldier lightly on one shoulder; he screamed with pain, but there was an edge of triumph in it as well. Moments later, he was dead.
Next came a burning tree, silhouetting a woman standing courageously in front of it. “You shall never have him,” she cried, and threw a powder on the ground before her. Then she gestured with her hand and flames appeared amidst the powder, burning bright and terrible as it lit the strange, dust-like substance. It exploded with shocking force, and she was gone with nothing to mark where she and the tree had once stood, but for a charred crater in the ground.
That scene was replaced with another, and another, and another, until Juilin felt as though he was being crushed by the images.
And as suddenly as they had appeared, they were gone.
Juilin stared at the man in front of him, panting for breath. The man glared at him with uncontained hatred, then slowly drew its sword, and Juilin knew he was doomed. He was a moderate swordsman at best, using his speed to make up for his other deficiencies, but he could hardly have fought a squirrel in this state, and something told him he was facing a master. This time it wasn’t a sixth sense, however; it was a reflection on the way his luck was going.
With eye-blurring speed, the man attacked, drawing his sword across in a clean cut that should have torn through the boy’s chest. Juilin barely managed to block it in time, and the force of the blow nearly tore his weapon out of his hand. In the same instant it was deflected, the blade came back into play, whipping across his left arm and slicing it open. The young captain tried to react to the next strike, already on its way, but he was far slower than his opponent; the hilt caught him a powerful blow to the shoulder and knocked Juilin to his knees, where he stayed, unable to find the strength to stand.
Juilin’s foe wiped his sword and sheathed it, then picked up the boy’s blade, studying it with something like curiosity now that his work was done.
“Utterly useless,” he said dismissively, dropping it to the ground. “Had I put in a proper blow, it would have shattered like cheap glass.”
Thinking of the strength behind each strike, Juilin wondered what a proper blow was like. This did not bode well for him.
“As for you . . .” The man smiled coldly, and he shuddered. “You are worth the trouble, Clan member, which is worse for you. It would be better for you if I had killed you from the first, but you are too valuable now. Anyone who can enter my mind, even unconsciously, must be taken to the City. And if you are who I think you are . . .” He smiled again, cruelly. “The king will be most pleased to see you.”
Juilin doubted the feeling would be mutual.
Luke came around slowly, feeling sick and slightly bruised. The moment he opened his eyes, he closed them again straightaway; even the faint lantern light hurt. After a moment or two, he opened his eyes fractionally and gave them time to adjust, then opened them a bit wider. Eventually, he had them completely open and looked around.
He was on a small cot, covered with a too-white sheet to keep him warm, and seemed to be alone. A wooden table next to him held a cup of water with a jug next to it and what appeared to be the beginnings of a journal entry. Curious, Luke sat up and looked at it. It read:
The boy appears to be improving steadily, which I believe to be good. The arguments still fly around camp, however. Some say he should be killed, but most insist he will help their cause; they seem to blame the Traon archer for the poor child’s reaction, and the general has accordingly sent him back to his king. The true question is why he shot at the boy, and to that, he could give no satisfactory answer.
The boy is what concerns me more, however. I could find no physical damage at first; he seemed to be merely sleeping, and it appeared a touch would wake him, but we could not cause him to stir. On the second day, however, I discovered something interesting; I had not noticed before, but his skin had been an ashen tint, as though he was near death from exhaustion, and his breathing had an odd, too-deep quality to it. Then the breathing began to level out, returning to normal; shortly afterward, his skin gained color. I expect him to wake in a few hours time, and I cannot help but wonder if
The writing ended there; whoever had jotted it down had apparently not finished. Anxious, Luke sank back into his bed; from what he had read, it had sounded like he almost killed himself in his rage and grief. How had he done it? He could only remember the power roaring through him like fire, and the result of his work.
There were voices outside and Luke sat up again; before anyone else arrived, he had to know how well he could fight. Raising his hand, he concentrated on the cup of water, biting his lip as he focused. The water stirred, nothing more, but he felt as drained as though he had tried to move an anthill.
Then the source of the voices entered the tent and he forgot all else as he stared with shock, horror, and confused recognition.
Michael woke with a soft groan, feeling bolts of agony lance alternately through his side and his arm. Instantly, someone brought a cup to his lips.
“Drink,” a firm voice ordered. “I don’t care how bad it tastes; you need it.”
Michael gulped down the liquid, barely managing not to choke at the vile taste; as it was, he gave a grimace that could have frightened a flock of birds. The nearby person chuckled.
“Yes, it is rather horrid, but it’s better than what would have happened.”
“Not by much,” Michael muttered, opening his eyes. There was darkness all around, and he couldn’t see the speaker.
“You don’t know what you’re saying, but I see your point.” A blacker shadow shifted, and light suddenly flared. The boy blinked heavily, unable to move his arm to shield his eyes. “Unfortunately, we have nothing better to use, not even poison. I have been told that is preferable.”
“Who are you,” Michael demanded, his voice hoarse and far weaker than he liked. “Why did you save me?”
“Good question,” came the dry reply. “Maybe because not even we can consciously condemn a young boy to the fate that would’ve awaited him should the Flicker’s poison have taken effect?”
“Flicker?” He could see the person now, barely. He looked to be in his late twenties or early thirties, with unreadable gray eyes; leaning against the back of the man’s chair was a wooden staff topped with a blade, similar to and yet different than a spear.
“Yes, Flicker—that’s what attacked. Have you not heard of the creatures that stalk these lands?”
“Not particularly, no. In fact, there’s never been any such creatures around before.”
“Hmm. They must have come with the war then—the fighting might have drawn them.”
Michael closed his eyes, feeling very tired. “Are you Asmór?”
There was a short pause. “Yes.”
“Than how do you know about Flickers?”
“We’ve killed a few,” he replied. “They’re nasty things, and we’ve had to work hard to take them down; half of our squad was lost the first time we encountered one. After that, we learned to keep our distance.”
Michael’s eyes opened again. “What would have happened, if the poison had gotten me?”
“You would have died,” the Asmór answered quietly. “A terrible death, too—very painful. The poison is slower once the Flicker is dead, but it still kills, and we were afraid you wouldn’t wake in time to take the antidote.”
