The gift turned out to be a finely made bird with a long tail, studded with gems and decorated with patterns. The only point was that the bird’s head was missing. Elcha and I stared at each other, both puzzled.
I took the box from my sister’s hands, and feeling that there was something behind it all, tapped the bottom. The missing part dropped on the bed. The bird’s head transformed smoothly into a small dagger, thin and sharp, made of the same star ore casting its bright highlights.
“What is it?” Elcha gasped.
I picked both parts and found the groove joining them together. The dagger entered the
sheath… Click! The two parts became one.
“Hairpin,” I said, still examining the thing. “That’s what you call the Master Truvle style. Typical!”
An outside man would never get to the secret in this little thing.
Elcha took the hairpin and looked closely at it. She then pressed softly the bird’s eye, a green piece, and pulled it. Click! The blade yielded and came back smoothly.
“Wow!” she exclaimed, and just next moment her hair was already gathered in a bundle fixed with the gift.
She circled in front of the mirror in admiration. But then she froze settling her enthusiastic gaze on my face.
“And you? What did he give to you?”
I could not help smiling as I held the cloak open. Elcha screamed as she swept her eyes over the daggers. “Show them to me! Show! Any secret, too?”
“Yes, here,” I exposed the blades and let the chains out trying to be as cautious as I could. That made my sister’s eyes pop even more, and even more questions showered on me.
I told her about Truvle’s making an ass of me, and how I witnessed a Vernor being made. Elcha was listening, all absorbed in the story and looking at the daggers with her eyes full of dreams.
But then her face grew dark and she added, in a quite serious voice, “Nargara must have been really scared then, so even I have to get a gift with a sting now.”
Despite her young age and talkative nature, Elcha had an amazing capacity to notice, at certain points, the very essence of things.
“Yes, really scared…” I confirmed thoughtfully. “And now I have to learn from Yoos how to manage these claws. But you know, this is all the better… Much better than feeling helpless… Right now I can do nothing but run away, and this, as it turned out, does not always help.”
Elcha’s face got totally grim.
“Let’s drop this! I do hope I’ll never again meet such terrible creatures!” I shivered at the memories that proved so unexpectedly sharp and fresh, then hugged my sister and pulled her closer.
“The best part is that you are alive and it’s all over,” she said quietly, as she was stroking my hair. For a moment it felt like I was her baby sister, and not the other way round.
The Training
Next morning, Nargara got us up at dawn, so two red arrows started dashing around the house and the area, busy with the instructions we got. Elcha went to the meadows to collect herbs.
Me, having filled a bag, rushed around the customers to deliver elixirs, drugs and ice-messages – efils.
Efils are small round bubbles with water frozen inside. In ancient times, the Watermen, experts in this element, discovered a very peculiar feature about the liquid – it can perceive, accumulate and store the information transmitted to it.
However, this feature is not so easy to use. The fact is that water records everything, and it is nearly impossible to isolate the right piece of information from the abundance of it coming in.
Many centuries ago, though, some Elses managed to solve the problem. They had tried hard and long before they developed a spell that could help freeze water so that it did not melt back even when subjected to the worst heat. Little by little, this knowledge spread around, and the exchange of liquid messages got its leading role.
To begin with, the native element was more familiar, more convenient and faster to use.
Second, the pictures and images were very accurate here, which could not be done through conventional handwritten letters. With proper skill, actually, you can charge an efil even with the subtlest emotion – your feelings, smell perception, sounds, visual images and fantasies. In other words, the whole range of sensations in a single small bubble.
Third, water messages can be better and easier protected compared to paper. This technology has been improved through ages, and every sorcerer now has excelled in this just as the whim takes them.
I heard that in the capital, Ozeron, there is the Efillit, a large crystal, which held the records of the entire history, on from the moment the Watermen learnt to use liquids to store information. This huge crystal of frozen clear mountain water is in the heart of the capital, next to Ozirion – the palace where the Lord of the Water World resides. And it never stops growing. Year after year, it expands with the information about all the new developments and changes around the empire. People say that this jumbo can be seen on the Lower Square, standing high above all the houses in the area, always sparkling in the Sun and emitting a slightly white radiance in the night, and remaining ice even in the hottest days. That is definitely magic.
Now, this day I had three efils to deliver. Two had to be taken to customers in Karun, a third one to be taken beyond – to Mount Eagle. There was a guard detachment, which was in charge of the main trade route running around the city and stretching far to the east.
The guards often exchanged messages. Sometimes I had to run delivering efils between the detachments several times a day.
Having delivered the remedies and the ice mail to all the customers, I headed for Mount Eagle, deliberately making it my last destination for the day. That day Yoos was on duty with his squadron, and we had scheduled a training session to practice some hand-to-hand combat.
Actually, I didn’t fancy all those things – they made my whole body hurt afterwards. And Yoos, to put it mildly, never had a heart and would drive me just as much as he did all of his
guys.
But now I did not just run there, but I flew, with a bright picture of my training session circulating all over my mind. And with a real weapon in my hands! My own weapon in my own hands!
The city was already left behind, and the Sun, looking over the mountain range, lit up the road ahead. The day had to be warm.
Several times I came across carts, all creaking under a pile of goods carried for sale. Once I saw a flock of sheep. I swept among them, which scared the poor animals half to death. Frightened, they rushed all different ways, and I could hear a good deal of expletive from the shepherds behind.
A couple of hours later the northern slope of Mount Eagle could be seen. The garrison was in its right part, so I just got round another rock and went straight there.
The Eagle’s Nest fortress seemed relatively small, yet quite strong. It was built of huge gray stones whose color matched the main rock, and which gave the impression that the fort was part of the rock.
Nearby, a cheerful waterfall was running noisily in fast mountain streams. Not as big as in Karun, though, yet showing some strength.
Nargara told once that the fortification was built quite a long time ago, when the trade way running through Karun was much busier, and there were more than a few robbers in the area. No better place for them! Deserted mountains, no guard, lots of carts transporting piles of goods – that’s what paradise for criminals must look like.
The local merchants soon got fed up with the robbers, and after a while, Lord Sakhord – the current ruler’s great-grandfather, ordered several fortresses be built around, with guardians patrolling the entire path far and wide. Two of them were built here in the Highlands – one in Karun, the other – on Mount Eagle.
I slowed down as I approached the fortress gate and gave a loud shout. The guard stuck his head from above, and the next instant the gate yielded open with a creak.
“Hey, Ricka!” Tonar greeted me from above. He was a young guard from the junior garrison. Apparently, he had been put there as the gate guard, which must have made him enormously proud.
“Hi, Tonar! They must have appreciated some merit of yours to put you here today, right?” I asked. I knew the rule there – only the warriors of the senior and more experienced garrison were allowed to the gate duty, while younger ones could earn the accolade for some special act only, so each of them tried hard to take up the post. I still found it quite strange a system of encouragement, but men will remain men, so never even try to get their logic.
By that point Tonar had already had the I-am-the-happiest-of the-boys smile all over his childish face, being absolutely sure I was extremely impressed.
“I won the sword tournament yesterday! Now am here the whole week,” he replied happily.
“Atta boy!” I tried to look fascinated. “Just go on that way and one day I’m going to see you the junior squad commander.”
The smile on the guy’s face got even broader, while he also got his shoulders straightened up thus showing he was up to that kind of change in his life.
Yoos often arranged fight contests in his squad, and a couple of times he even put me against his soldiers, but each time they made short work of me. Yes, it’s hard to stand long against someone who stands two heads taller and is twice as large.
“Met Yoos today? Any idea where I could see him?” I asked as I threw my bag onto my other shoulder.
“Well, this morning he was out in the training field. Looked quite out of humor, by the way. Got everyone up before dawn and has been riding them hard since then, non-stop. Poor guys must be dying now.”
“Is that so? I see…” now I could feel absolutely nothing to make me go there.
And step after step it got even worse.
“Hey! Keep your chin up,” he shouted and threw me a small bag. I already knew what was inside. Tonar was the son of Mr. Kold, the bakery owner in Karun.
As I took the bag I was overwhelmed with the smell of fresh cinnamon rolls that I really loved. As he knew this, Tonar often brought a couple to treat me after training.
“Without me today,” he smiled.
“Thanks!” I replied and dragged my feet to the drill field with no single trace of the enthusiasm I had had before.
Passing through the barracks where the guards were dwelling, I ended up in an open ground with about thirty people standing there.
The place was full of sounds – beats, clash of weapons, groans of the trainees; somebody was fighting hand to hand, while others used their swords, a couple of guys only working out to build some muscle.
Everyone was naked waist up, all tanned, tall and handsome. The selection procedure for such squads was a tough one, so you would never see any mama’s boy or a milquetoast there. The service there was very prestigious. On top of all that, it paid rather well since those merchants wanted their carts to be always under reliable protection.
The cacophony of clanging, exclamations and creaks was overlapped with the thunder of Yoos’s voice. He was yelling at his people never trying to mince any of his words.
“Dickheads! Hey, Sith! Who ever keeps a sword like that? Who taught you that, y’idiot? Just chop it with your both hands! Visar, keep your stupid head covered with your shield! Why are you letting it twist like a rag? In a real fight you would have already got three crossbow bolts in your coconut! You, pussies! Fighting like girls! No, you are even worse!”
He did not even slow down when he saw me, “Look! Ricka can already do it better than all of you together! This girl is already doing it better!”
Then he thought for a moment and spat down giving his final conclusion, “Jerks!”
I raised one eyebrow skeptically. I still remembered him giving quite a different opinion (to say the least of it) of me during the previous class.
For a while, Yoos stayed in the role of a tyrant torturing his people even more, and then headed toward me.
He was of average height, flat-bellied and shapely built, with dark short hair sprinkled gray on the temples, and light gray eyes that stood so brightly out against his bronze skin.
The commander of the Karun guard was not young, over forty, actually. Yet, he was definitely in an excellent physical shape – kind of a tough wolf that had been around and had collected an honorary collection of scars on his half-battered skin. One of the scars ran through his chest from the left shoulder to the right side.
When he came closer, I just handed him the efil.
Yoos opened the flask with his teeth, spat out the cork, whispered the spell so I could barely hear it and closed his eyes. The ice in the bubble melted instantly, and the contents spilled onto the warrior’s palm. A couple of seconds later he looked at me again, frowned for some reason.
“I’ll be right back, start without me,” he threw and headed to the Head building.
I nodded silently and moved toward the assault course, the right side of which was my training area.
As soon as Yoos disappeared into the building, all movement on the training ground
stopped, as if time itself had stopped. The crowd breathed a sigh of relief through a few dozen of healthy men’s throats. Weapons fell onto the ground followed by the exhausted guards.
But as I approached the poor squad, the blades on my belt caught their eyes, and the huge mass of human bodies on the ground seemed to come back to life. Then I heard a familiar voice right near me, “What is that you got there?”
I lowered my eyes – Visar, breathing heavily, was getting up coming closer, as his eyes seemed to be glued to my waist.
“Can I have a look?”
“Sure, please,” I handed him one of the blades.
He took it, looked from all the sides around, played throwing it from one hand to the other trying the balance, gave a closer look, and then his eyebrows jumped up.
“Is that Star Ore?” he exclaimed. “Wow! There were a couple of carts robbed last week. Was it you?”
The guy hooted with laughter pleased with his own joke. As for me, I just looked at him expressing total indifference and holding my arms folded, thus showing that it was not at all funny.
“Where is Star Ore?” I could hear voices from behind. A few guys jumped up and were already next to me. I knew many of them pretty well.
They had taken me as a friend rather soon, which came as no surprise – for over a month then we had been sweating side by side through the assault course and collecting all the bruises and cuts that were coming. I think Yoos was never bothered by the fact I was a girl.
During that time, the guys had more than a few chances to witness my shame. They would often laugh and crack jokes, yet always in a friendly and somewhat kind way. They all remembered their own bruises and misfortunes after the first workouts, so nobody appeared arrogant. Besides, the guards often asked me to take messages to their families in Karun. And I tried to never refuse their requests. They, in turn, helped me through my training with their practical and timely advice.
I have to admit, however, that not all of them viewed me as an associate. Some of them were flirting openly, and I even suspected that the entire squad had plunged into some hidden rivalry over my heart. It seemed that Soren was in the lead – he had already come twice to propose. He was clearly one of the leaders, always determined and persistent, and at some point I even felt respect for him.
And now, he was darting adoring glances at me, which made me shiver. Should expect some matchmakers to come my home again!
“Wow! Can I get a look?”
“Hey, I want to see it, too. Don’t keep it too long, pass it over here”
The blades went circulating from hand to hand, each time met with exclamations.
