“No!” Spratling slammed a hand to Dovian’s chest, stopping him. “No, we were to draw lots. We all agreed! You cannot-”
Dovian’s hand covered the younger man’s, hot and coarse, sweaty. “Don’t make this hard on me. I’m sick. I’m not getting any better. The truth is I’m dying. I’ve been so for a long time now. I’ve been waiting to understand how best to say good-bye to the world. Now I’ve found it.”
“You cannot die.” Spratling knew he sounded childish, but he could not help himself. “You cannot leave me-”
“You’re wrong there. I’ve given you everything I could. I’ve lived the best years of my life with you, lad. I’ve given you every bit of wisdom I have. Wasn’t much, I know, but I’ve taught you everything a father should, haven’t I? In a just world fathers would live to see their sons become men. Only then would they leave them. That’s what’s happening here.”
Spratling saw a second movement on the pier again. He watched, breathless, until he saw the boat emerge from the shadows, rowing back toward the Ballan. He wanted them to stop. He needed more time. To Dovian, he said, “We made an agreement. It’s not your place-”
The older man sighed. “You’ll sit on the throne of Acacia someday. You will, even if you don’t know it yet. If I had my way I’d be there beside you, proud as can be. But I cannot help you with that as I’d like to. I can do this, though. I can do this.” He cupped his hand over the young man’s shoulder. “Let me show you one last thing-how to die glorious like.”
They did not actually hear the words from the returning group, but the message flowed to them on fingers of whispered electricity. The key was good! The warehouse was unlocked. They had killed two guards near the front gate but no others were in sight.
“I’ll make a hell of a blaze, I promise you that. Ah, Dariel, come on now. I’m just asking you this one thing…No, not one thing. I’ve a second thing as well. You won’t deny me it. I know you won’t, ’cause I raised you better than that.”
Less than an hour later, Spratling unfurled the black sail while the others still pulled on the oars. The wind had shifted. It blew them slicing through the ocean at a steady clip. The orange stain that announced the coming dawn illumined the horizon to the east. Behind them was blackness, silence. Like in his dream, he thought. The nothingness behind him. The nameless fear he had always to flee.
They put a second hour behind them. A few whispered fears that Dovian had been caught. None of them knew what he faced upon passing through that unlocked threshold. Perhaps the mission had failed. Spratling moved away from the others and stood in the prow of the ship. No matter what, Dovian was gone. It did not seem real. Did not seem possible. He wanted to stop the motion of the boat on the sea and the passing of time and just-
Such notions were ended in the most decisive of ways. Spratling knew the very moment Dovian sent his soul in search of the Giver. The blast of light that announced it turned the night to day and made the sea into a black mirror on which the contours of the heavens rippled and danced. He did not look back. He was afraid to. He was sure, at that moment, that behind him a raging conflagration reached up into the sky, Dovian’s soul at its apex and roaring into the heavens. He felt sure the inferno would reach out and consume the world if he turned and faced it. These thoughts were as unsubstantiated as those of dream logic, which is no logic at all. He knew it, but still he set his eyes on the eastern horizon and only faced the blaze there, fleeing the one behind him in a headlong flight into the coming day.
CHAPTER
Though Mena made sure never to waver in her duties as Maeben, the greater portion of her attention now went to her lessons with Melio. He met her in her compound every day, after she had completed her duties to the goddess. Instead of talking as they had done in their first few encounters, he tutored her solely in swordplay. He claimed to be out of practice and to never have been a teacher, but he dropped right into the role as if he had been born for it.
Within a few days of Mena stating her interest, Melio had ventured up into the interior highlands in search of suitable wood for practice swords. Though it was different from the ash used on Acacia, he did find a strong-grained timber of a reddish hue that served nicely. By the end of the first week they both danced about with training swords. They were lighter than he wished, but Melio was still pleased. His fingers caressed the gentle curves of the blades as if they wished to memorize each inch of them. He returned each day having made small refinements, added accoutrements, carved and sanded, oiled and honed the weapons in ways both functional and aesthetic.
Mena had little difficulty learning the postures, in getting her grip right, and setting her feet well. Any mistake that Melio corrected was banished forever. She never needed to be told a thing twice. At first this had surprised the tutor, but with the passing days he took her aptitude more and more as a given. They flew forward from one lesson to the next. Working on the various strokes, on how to best channel power from the legs up through the coiled tension of the torso and out to the blade. Her swims in the harbor and dives among the oysters had kept her fit, but Melio pushed her to use previously undiscovered muscles.
The First Form, that of Edifus at Carni, Mena committed to physical memory in three days. The fight between Aliss and the Madman of Careven took all of two days. Melio suggested they skip the Third Form, wherein the knight Bethenri went to battle with devil’s forks, but Mena would not hear of it. She helped him fashion versions of the short, daggerlike weapons. The two of them cut and slashed, bent and twirled, thrust and retreated throughout one long afternoon. They stirred up clouds of dust and attracted the eyes of the servants, who stood at respectful distances completely transfixed by the sight of their mistress spinning through the deadly motions of warcraft. She did her best to work through the exercises with the goddess’s calm faзade. She voiced no fatigue. She never protested against a challenge. She wiped sweat from her face and stood straight even while her chest heaved and billowed.
In the solitude of her chambers at night she curled on her side and hugged her legs to her chest and cried at her body’s torment. She did not recognize her own arms. They were thinner in some places, thicker in others, more angular, cut around the muscle in new ways. Fortunately, she could always recognize herself in the new shapes. The altered contours of her forearms, the shapes of the veins on the back of her hand, the striated cords at the base of her neck: it was always her, Mena. She was not so much changing into something different as she was emerging from beneath a long-held disguise. In the privacy of her inner rooms she stood unclothed, admiring the changes. In public, of course, she did her best to hide them.
If the priests knew anything of her daily routine-and they must have-they did not speak of it. Mena gave them no excuse to find fault with her. She was prompter in her duties than before. She was always on time for the evening ceremonies, for the special displays put on for visiting dignitaries, and she was more easily found inside her compound than previously, when she had spent her free moments in solitary exploration of the harbor floor. She sat through meetings in Maeben’s garments without so much as a crack in her resolve. In the space of two weeks she had to twice meet with grieving parents, ones whose children had been taken by the goddess. She found herself speaking through the goddess in ways meant to please the priests. She had never quite done this before, and she did not like to recall some of the things she had intoned before the tearful, penitent parents. “Look not at the sky,” she said once, “if you wish Maeben to see your reverence.”