Wildege
Kelim Station
Vyr had finished up all the little repairs that accumulated, even in a stead as well-kept as Kelim Station. Then, he’d cleaned the kitchen, scrubbed the foyer’s stone floor, tidied the parlor, aired his sleeping space, cleared leaves off the array, and in an excess of zeal, walked up onto the roof to inspect the berm, which was of course just fine.
In fact, the only thing he hadn’t done since Kel had left for Visalee was look to his shields.
Vyr went to the kitchen, poured himself a mug of cider, and went outside to settle into a chair under the sunlit sky.
Now that it was days too late, he wondered if he shouldn’t have gone with Kel to Visalee.
Practically Civilization, he remembered Kel saying, the morning she’d left, and snorted. Visalee wasn’t the farthest thing from Civilization—that would be Kelim Station. Which made Visalee the second farthest thing from Civilization.
Along Winterdark, when the Ribbons never left the sky, after a long day with the wood, and a couple ciders in her, Kel could be persuaded to speculate about the likelihood of more steads, beyond them, in the Backaway. Kel had heard stories when she’d been a girl in Visalee—longer ago than Vyr had been alive—stories of people living solitary among the trees. Those stories had grabbed her by the heart until one day she decided to find if they were true. And that was how Kelim Station came to be the last stead off Main Path.
Or, at least, the last that anybody knew about, because finding a Wilder who didn’t want to be found was a fool’s game, doomed to failure.
Kel now…If his life had fallen out otherwise, Kelim of Wildege might well have been the most frightening person Vyr had ever met. It wasn’t that she had so much of any specific Talent, but that her link with what she casually referred to as “the ambient” gave her access to what seemed to be a limitless range of Talent.
Kel was always and entirely open to the unfiltered Condition of Colemeno, as it was formalized in the technical books. Her pattern a spiderweb woven out of cloud and chaos, she should have been one of the monsters that had destroyed the first wave. Or—and more likely—she should have been an idiot—a savant, maybe; her body nothing but a vessel for random, deadly forces.
But Kel wasn’t a monster, and Vyr hadn’t met the knife that was sharper. She was an old woman with an affinity for wood, a fondness for cider, and a strange connection to chaos that he had reason to be grateful for, since she’d saved his life.
Truth told, he hadn’t expected to survive the initial fall, much less the blare of confusing energies that had drawn his Gifts like metal shred to a lodestone.
But the impact with the ground hadn’t killed him; and he’d fortunately broken an arm, not a leg. He’d lain, stunned, on the ground, staring up at the multitude of dancing lights above him, his mind insisting that he was somehow upside down, and the lights—the lights of the city—were properly below him. The draw on his core, terrifying in its strength, had finally roused him. It had been the basest instinct for survival that prompted him to reach out, clawing chunks of untamed energies to him, patching a shield together over his native shield until the draw lessened—and faded—enough.
Faint, head ringing, somehow he had gotten to his feet and staggered through a kaleidoscope of color until at last he found—a door.
He fell against it, that was his recollection, his broken arm screaming protest. The door wavered; it changed. It became an elder, her snowy hair in a braid, eyes reflecting the chaotic colors of forest and sky.
“They’re trying to kill me,” he gasped, and her face creased into a smile.
“Well, we can’t have that, now can we?”
That was the first time Kel had saved him. She was a Wild Haosa, jealous of her solitude, yet she granted him room in her domi; work; a place to huddle—yes, huddle. Hiding from those who wanted him dead.
She’d asked him no questions, not about his past, not about those who had dropped him, a Civilized man, into the middle of the Wild. She didn’t ask him to leave, though he had no doubt she’d be glad when he did go.
Which…maybe he should have left by now. He’d thought about it. But in the end, he stayed. He’d waited, though he didn’t know what he was waiting for.
The Ribbons were rising. He could feel them at his core.
Vyr got up and went inside the domi.