Chapter Seven
Inside, the house was drafty and small and the floor was no comfort, but it was better than nothing. He sat in a corner, trying not to sleep, awaiting the promised test.
There wasn’t much he could do to prepare. He wondered if they would hurt him. He had never been much of a fighter; it had always taken him too long to get angry. Consequently, he had little experience with his fists.
Not having slept the night before, he couldn’t keep his eyes from closing. He groaned as he realized he was falling asleep. His head bumped his knees—
And jerked up at the sound of hooves. He heard a horse nicker and sneeze. Still dark. A large splash in the river.
He was so tired. Being tired and alert at once gave the experience a surreal edge, as if things weren’t bizarre enough already. He had to decide whether to stay in the house—and perhaps have it knocked down around his ears—or go outside.
All his life he had been slow to act, thoughtful, predictable. Perhaps being unpredictable would give him an advantage... He stood. The roof hung a bare half inch above the top of his head. Hunkering down, he bunched his leg muscles to spring through the doorway. If he could run fast enough, perhaps he could get away.
Michael leaped through the door, keeping his head down, jaw clenched, hands crooked in fists before him—and butted headlong into something tall and solid. He rebounded and fell back, clapping his hands to the top of his head.
A Sidhe stood over him, wearing bright silver chain mail and sporting a long, wickedly pointed pike. Michael’s vision swam; he barely saw the Sidhe lower the pike and prod his sternum.
“Vera ais. Sepha jan antros pek,” said the Sidhe in a low voice. Michael regained his breath and looked around frantically. A few yards away, a Sidhe horse stood relaxed, pale gray blankets wrapped around its neck and withers, with a silvery saddle and no stirrups or reins. “Vas lenga spu?” Michael’s fear melted any anger he felt, but sharpened his perceptions. Even in the dark he could now see the Sidhe in detail: a spectral face and long, reddish hair; huge eyes with reverse epicanthic folds; long-fingered hands gripping his pike, fingernails trimmed to metallic points; boots made from the same silvery-gray material as the saddle; pearl-gray cape hanging loose around his shoulders to his calves.
The pike pressed harder, breaking skin, drawing blood. Michael squirmed and cried out.
“Vas lenga?”
“Leave me alone!” Michael shouted. He grabbed the pike and let it go immediately; it seemed to have sharp edges all around and cut his fingers.
“You don’t belong here,” the Sidhe growled. “Do you know who I am?”
“No!”
“I am Alyons, Wickmaster of the Blasted Plain and Pact Lands. Some call me Scarbita Antros—Scourge of Men. How did you get here? Why are you living in a house of wood?”
“I was sent here,” Michael said.
“Quos fera antros, to suma antros.”
“The boy is in our charge.”
Michael recognized Nare’s acid voice. She stood to one side, between them and the Crane Women’s hut, and Spart stood on the other side. Michael couldn’t see Coom. Alyons made no move, but his hands applied an ounce more pressure to the pike. Michael felt it scraping bone and cried out, but tried not to squirm again. “What is he doing here?” Alyons asked, eyes still on Michael, like a hunter unwilling to release his prey.
“I have told you,” Nare repeated. “He is in our charge.”
“He’s human. You don’t train humans.”
There was a rapid exchange in Sidhe between Spart and the Wickmaster. Alyons’ face filled with deep-set lines of hate, turning his smooth chiseled features into a mummy mask. He lifted the pike a hair’s breadth. “If I kill the boy, I remove a burden, no?”
“Probably,” Spart said. “But what would we do to you, in turn?”
“You’re t’al antros,” Alyons said contemptuously. Coom stepped from the shadows behind him.
“We are very, very old,” Spart said, “and the Sidhe of the Irall come to us to ask questions. Would you like your name mentioned when we respond—horse thief?”
The lines of Alyons’ face deepened, if that were possible. “It wouldn’t upset me,” he said. He lifted the pike a hair.
“And when Adonna’s priest comes for temelos?” Spart asked.
Coom dropped a hand on Alyons’ shoulder and pulled him roughly away, dragging his face down to her level. “Ours!”
“Then take him,” Alyons said with great calmness. He shrugged her off and walked to his horse, seeming to glide on rather than jump. “But I will go to the Arborals and question the grace of wood.”
“They brought it,” Nare said.
“You are a crude and foolish fricht,” Spart said.
“Ours,” Coom repeated.
Alyons leaned forward. The horse seemed to turn to smoke, every curve blurring and smoothing. Then, in silence, they were gone. Michael lay on the dirt, his chest bleeding sluggishly, his hands bloody from contact with the pike. The Crane Women were gone, as well.
He got to his feet and made for the shelter of the house. Inside, he tried to keep his lungs from heaving and held his mouth with his bloody hands to stifle sobs. He wasn’t sure what had just happened—whether the Crane Women had tested him, or he had actually been visited by Alyons. The Sidhe’s voice still haunted his ears, rich and deadly as venom.
Within minutes, however, Michael could hardly stay awake. There sounded a vibrant chirping nearby, repeated several times—birds?—and that was the last thing he remembered until his arm was grabbed. “Get out of my house,” he demanded groggily.
“Jan antros.” Coom leaned over him, the light of dawn through the door outlining the side of her head. “Not eyes-full! We promise test...”
“Go away,” he said, “please.” And he was alone in the hut.
Morning came and went, and the day, and it was near evening again when he awoke, stiff and still exhausted. He felt his chest. The blood had clotted and the wound had been smeared with white paste. It was tender but didn’t ache. The cuts on his hands had scabbed over.
A bowl of mush and fruit waited by the door. He ate slowly with his fingers, head full of fog, past all thought. The temptation to give up, throw it all in, grew with the pain in his body and the tiredness clamped to every muscle.
When he finished eating, he rolled over and looked at the dirt floor. Idly, he drew a line in the dirt with his finger, then wrote a line of words, and another, half purposefully, until he had scrawled a poem.
The scraping on the roof at night—
Chitin or nail or stiff, hot hair—
In dark of August, summer’s heat
Constructs a limb of dust and air.
If you step out to watch the clouds,
Silent lightning will prance and grin.
While on the roof the summer waits
And if you try to go back in...
Why, Hello! The season is a spider.
Often, when he wrote a poem, he had no idea what it meant. The back of his head seemed disconnected from all present circumstance, as though facts and images seeped in slowly and were jumbled along the way.
But in these lines the menace was obvious. He was scared clear through, and he had no way to fight his fear. Not yet, perhaps not ever.
He stood by the door of his house and watched the sun go down, hands in his pants pockets. Nare came out of the hut and strode toward him. When they were face to face, she took his hands in hers and peered at the palms, then pulled apart his blood-stained shirt and examined his chest.
“How did I do?” Michael asked with an edge of bitterness.
“You are no good to us asleep. You were to go to the market today, get yourself a card.”
“I mean, how did I do last night?”
“Terribly,” she said. “He would have killed you. And later... You are a terrible warrior.”
“I never wanted to be a warrior,” he said incredulously.
She held out her twiggish fingers and shrugged elegantly. “The choice is to be a warrior, or die,” she said. “Your choice.”
Coom and Spart crossed the stream and entered the hut.
As Nare stood motionless beside him and Michael waited nervously, the stars twirled into view. Coom and Spart emerged with eight long torches and began staking them in a circle between the house and the stream. They lighted the torches by cupping their hands behind the wick and blowing on them. Sparks and flame shot up into the night and an orange circle of light shimmered within the perimeter.
“Time is difficult to measure in the Realm,” Spart said, approaching Michael and taking him by the hand. The sensation of her long, strong fingers around his own quelled any protest. She led him into the circle and motioned for Coom to join them. “You will learn our functions now,” Spart said. “Coom is an expert in what the Sidhe call isray, physical combat. Nare is versed in stray, preparation of the mind. And I will teach vickay, the avoidance of battle as a means to victory. Tonight, since it is the simplest and easiest of the three, you will learn from Coom the beginnings of how to survive a fight with human or Sidhe.”
Coom walked around Michael slowly, with high, almost prancing steps. Nare and Spart watched from outside the circle of torches. Michael regarded Coom warily, hands at his sides, head inclined slightly. He jumped as she reached down and grabbed a leg to reposition it. “Don’t fall over,” she said. “Like stool. One leg to be like two.” She continued her circling. “Morning, you run to Halftown, run back. Tonight, you just stand up.” She shot out one arm and pushed him. He promptly fell on his butt and scrambled to his feet again. She reached out and shoved once more. He stumbled but stayed upright. She circled and shoved from another angle. He toppled forward on his face. “Like stool,” she repeated. She shoved again, and again, but he remained standing.
His face flushed and his jaw hurt from clenching his teeth, but he was surprised at how calm he felt. The methodic circling, shoving, went on for an hour until he kept his balance no matter what angle Coom attacked from.
The torches guttered. “Ears,” Coom said. Nare and Spart extinguished the feeble flames. Clouds obscured the stars now; except for the feverish orange glow from the hut windows, there was no illumination. He couldn’t see any of the Crane Women. He listened to the sound of their feet moving, trying to guess how many circled him. A hand pushed hard on his back and he went to one knee, then got up quickly.
“Ears,” Coom said again. He sensed a footfall nearby and braced himself instinctively in the opposite direction. The blow came, but he kept his balance.
Another hour passed. He was groggy and his legs ached abominably. His shoulders were sore and swollen. For a time he rotated in the darkness, until he realized he couldn’t hear their footfalls any more. He was alone. The Crane Women had returned to their hut.
He felt his way to his house and collapsed in a corner. He couldn’t sleep. He rubbed his arms and shoulders and contemplated past gym classes, where he had never performed enthusiastically. It wasn’t a matter of being weak or clumsy; he could run well enough, his coordination was good, his frame sound. Michael had just never cared that much, and the gym teachers had seldom inspired confidence in those who didn’t profess to be jocks.
Inspiration wasn’t the issue here. Whatever he thought, however miserable he was, tomorrow he would run until he dropped—which he was sure he would. No protests, no complaints.
After the incident with Alyons, Michael fully appreciated his position.
Obviously, things could get much worse.