Chapter Nine
The Crane Women ran Michael around the level grasslands, with the stick and without it, sometimes one or two of them pacing him and giving directions. They seemed tireless. When he was near collapse from exertion, they wouldn’t even be breathing hard. After a while, Michael suspected Sidhe and Breeds just didn’t get tired. He asked about that once, and Nare simply smiled.
He learned the Pact Lands within the vicinity of Euterpe and Halftown quickly. There wasn’t all that much to learn—grasslands, the curve of the river, one fork and an oxbow beyond the fork.
He asked about the Blasted Plain. Spart told him that part of his education would come later. He could see the haze beyond the perimeter of the Pact Lands, and occasionally make out black spires rising through orange-brown clouds, but his radius was never more than six miles from Halftown, and the Pact Lands, he surmised, extended at least ten miles on all sides.
Sometimes, his exercises seemed ridiculous, designed to humiliate him.
“Five times you have missed the mark,” Nare said, standing over him. Her shadow bisected four concentric circles drawn in the dirt ten feet from where he squatted. He had been set to tossing pebbles, trying for the central circle. After an hour he had only hit the center three times.
“I’ve missed more often than that,” he said.
“You miss my words, too,” Nare said. “You fail to understand anything we’ve been showing you. Five tests.” Michael tried to remember the times he had been tested in any meaningful way. “Not a good sign,” she went on. “Don’t you see the truth behind the tests? Must we explain in words? Words are so beloved to you!”
“They’re clear, at least,” Michael said. “What do you want me to learn? I’ve done everything I can to cooperate—”
“Except use your head properly!” Nare grabbed his arm and hauled him to a standing position. “This is not a bulls-eye. These are not pebbles. You are not training, and this is no series of useless games.”
“Funny,” Michael said. He regretted saying it immediately; he had vowed that whatever the pressure, he would not behave like a smartass.
“You’re a crack-voiced child, and worse, jan wiros. What have you learned?”
“I think... I think you’re trying to teach me how to survive by thinking a certain way. But I’m not a magician.”
“You are not required to be one. How would we have you think?”
“With confidence.”
“Not that alone. What else?”
“I don’t know!”
“If we tried to turn you into a magician, we’d be even more doltish than you. You’re not special. But Sidhedark is not like Earth. You must learn how the Realm is special, how it supports and nurtures us. You cannot be told. Words spoil the knowledge. So we must torment you, boy, to make you see. The Sidhe returned language to humans thousands of years ago, but they never explained how language can destroy. That was deliberate.”
“I’m trying to cooperate,” Michael said sullenly.
“You cooperate so you can show us you aren’t a fool.” She smiled, a hideous and revealing expression which didn’t reassure him at all, and probably wasn’t meant to. Her teeth were cat-sharp and her gums black as tar.
“In betlim, little combat, warriors not kill. Best,” Coom said. They circled each other with the sticks held before them in broad-spaced hands. “Lober, not hurt. Win. Strategy.”
Michael nodded.
“One thing very bad,” Coom said. “Rilu. Anger. Never let mad control! Mad is poison in betlim. In great combat, rilu is mord. Hear?”
He nodded again. Coom touched his stick with her own. “Disarm you now.”
He gripped his stick tighter, but that only made his hands hurt more when, with a whirl and a flourish, she whacked his stick straight up in the air, parallel to the ground. He caught it as it fell, wincing at the pain in his wrists.
“Good,” Coom said. “Now you hear why you learn. Hear that stick is wick; you are Sidhe given power of pais where you stand. I take wick and take land from you. Stop me— maybe stop me. Hear how I move. Take control of air. Of Realm.”
Then she did an amazing thing. She leaped up, braced her feet against nothingness, and sprung at him with her stick. He retreated, but not before receiving another bone-rattling blow. She hung before him a moment and landed on her feet. “Good,” she said. “Stronger.”
She disarmed him again, this time whacking the stick out of his reach before it came down. He walked over to pick it up and turned to see Coom standing where he had been.
“Gave up ground,” she accused, disgusted.
“You took away my stick.”
“Didn’t take away most important weapon.” She threw down her stick and backed up a pace. “Come at with kima.”
He didn’t hesitate. She reached around with one spider hand as his stick came down on the spot where she had stood, grabbed hold and slammed it to the ground.
He could feel the bones in his back pop before he let go.
“Little defeats teach potential,” Coom said. “Not to waste my time, you will train with this.” Spart came from the hut carrying a headless mannequin with bush-branch arms. It held a smaller stick, tied to leafy “hands” with twine. Michael groaned inside, then resigned himself to the indignity.
“Take this off thirty paces and hammer it into the ground. Then fight with it,” Spart said.
He did as he was told, clutching the cloth, straw and wood mannequin and using his stick to pound it in like a stake. He assumed a stance before the mannequin, imitating Coom and feeling foolish—
And it promptly swung up its stick and knocked his to the ground. The mannequin vibrated gleefully, twisted on its stake and became limp again.
When the hair on his neck had settled, Michael retrieved his stick and resumed his stance, a little farther back. They sparred for a bit, the mannequin having at least the two disadvantages of being staked to the ground and using a shorter, flimsier stick. Michael wasn’t encouraged.
He had no illusions that the fight was fair. He got his lumps.