Chapter 11 ILSEVEL
ILSEVEL
I don’t mount Diira as Taar’s sister rides slowly toward me on that leggy bay steed of hers.
I don’t want her thinking I’m afraid to meet her on my own two feet, that I somehow need my licorneir in order to be strong.
I simply wait, her sword gripped in my hands, and watch her approach.
I refuse to let my gaze trail after Taar as he and Elydark disappear into the forest.
Tassa reins in her bay and looks down at me for some silent moments.
A wind kicks up, quick and chilly in this open space, and pulls at strands of her dark hair, teasing them free of their braids.
Her face is grim; though her features are beautiful like her brother’s, there is no softness to be had in them.
Finally she dismounts and strides toward me. “All right, bride of my brother,” she says, folding her arms. “Show me what you’ve learned.”
I chew the inside of my cheek. “I’ve had only one lesson.”
She tips her head ever-so slightly to one side. “Is this how humans train their warriors? With excuses?”
My jaw firms. I take her varitar and assume the first stance, one hand on the hilt, the other out for balance. Then I go through three forms in quick succession, including a final double-handed grip. The air whistles at each pass of the blade.
Tassa watches in silence. When I’ve finished, I glance her way, hoping I don’t look too much like a puppy, eager for praise.
“Not bad,” she allows, then reaches out and adjusts my grip slightly.
“The weight will rest better like so. Do you feel the difference? In any one-handed stroke, you must hold it this way, or your balance will be thrown off.”
I nod and attempt another series of strokes. Tassa watches in stern silence. When she has nothing to say, I perform the strokes again, adding a few small flourishes, which fail to impress her.
“Now,” she says, “what would happen if you were to do that while on the back of a licorneir in full charge? How do you think it would change your angle?”
I adjust slightly, turning my shoulders. “Right?” I ask.
“There’s only one way to find out.”
With those words, Tassa mounts her gelding and rides back to the forest. For a moment I think she’s given up on me entirely. Instead, however, she finds herself a stout stick of comparable length to the varitar, but thicker.
I’ve got a bad feeling about this.
Diira comes up behind me, nudging my shoulder gently. I suspect a good bruising is in my future, I sing silently to her. Probably to my tailbone, first and foremost.
She sings back at once, I will not let you fall.
I stroke her cheek fondly, not convinced it’s a promise she can keep.
Tassa returns and looks down her nose at me. “Why are you not yet mounted?”
I flush. I don’t care for her to see the way Diira must kneel in order for me to get into the saddle. I can manage a horse well enough with a mounting block, but though Diira is small for a licorneir, she’s still much too tall for my human frame.
Tassa says nothing, however, until Diira rises gracefully from her knees. Then shortly: “Well?”
“Well what?” I ask.
“Come at me!”
I set my teeth. Singing to Diira, I urge her around and trot some yards away to line up our attack.
The song of her experience moves through my bones, lending me more confidence, perhaps, than I fully merit.
It would be better if she took over the matter entirely, but she continues to submit to me and my will.
I have to wonder at that. Why should these ancient beings of starlight and spirit allow themselves to be in any way subjugated to riders who are so vastly their inferiors?
Yet I feel nothing but eagerness and love radiating from Diira’s soul, no frustration at my ignorance or frailty.
I know enough to charge at Tassa’s left side so that I may strike a blow on my right rather than reaching over Diira’s head.
My licorneir puts on a burst of speed, her body elegantly collected—neck arched, chin tucked, power evenly distributed both fore and hind.
Tassa and her gelding look suddenly small, and a surge of eager viciousness rises in my heart.
How dearly I should love to teach her a lesson!
Catching my spirit, Diira throws back her head and trumpets a war cry.
I feel suddenly and with a dart of terror how very unmatched the two of us—I with my single afternoon’s worth of lessons, and my licorneir, who has possibly bonded with many generations of Licornyn warriors over the years.
There’s no time to dwell on this thought, however.
Already we bear down on Tassa and her mount.
The gelding shifts nervously where it stands, but his rider sits like stone.
She doesn’t even raise that stick of hers in defense.
Suddenly conscious of the sharp blade I wield, I pull my stroke at the last moment, missing Tassa by a foot.
We streak on by, slow, turn, and face her once more. She looks positively bored.
“Are you afraid?” she asks coldly.
“Of hurting you, yes.”
“You won’t hurt me, bride of my brother.”
The confidence in her tone incenses me more than any taunts or jibes. I urge Diira into another charge, brandishing my weapon. This time when I swing, I go for it. And miss entirely. My timing was all wrong. I curse soundly as Diira carries me on.
“Keep swinging!” Tassa shouts after me. “Assume you’re charging through a host, not dueling.”
Though frustration burns in my gut, I do as I’m told, performing the strokes at invisible enemies. I try to imagine the reverberation in my arm, but it’s impossible. I need to make solid contact with something if I’m going to learn.
Sweat pours down my face and neck when Diira and I turn back to look at Tassa. She, of course, is fresh and utterly cool. Gods-damn her.
Trust me, Vellara, Diira sings into my mind. Move with me. Let the song flow through you, don’t try to control it.
I’m not entirely certain what song has to do with combat.
It seems to me to be all about timing and muscle and control.
But I sing back a wordless affirmative, and we go again.
This time when we make a pass, I try to feel Diira’s song.
I feel the rhythm of her hooves and begin to sense other rhythms as well—air and breath, blades of grass, clouds passing overhead.
The turn and tilt of Tassa’s head as she watches me come, the heave of her gelding’s sides.
All these subtle harmonies, intricately connected in a complex symphony of life and being.
I aim my blow. And this time . . . Gods above, this time, Tassa brings her stick up to deflect it! It’s just a slight movement, but it’s something. I actually made her work.
A triumphant whoop rips from my lips, even as Diira carries me by. Tassa’s voice barks behind me, ordering me to perform the second and third strokes. I comply with enthusiasm, and when Diira turns about once more, I point my blade at my new instructor, eyes sparkling with delight.
Tassa’s lip curls. Then she says: “Again.”
We drill for another few hours before Tassa finally gives me leave to tumble off my licorneir’s saddle and collapse in the grass. I lay where I fall, panting, staring up at the distant sky.
After some while a shadow falls across me. I squint up at Tassa, who drops a waterskin beside my head. “Drink up,” she says.
I gratefully pour water into my mouth. It isn’t ilsevel-purified, but I’m so parched I don’t really care. I drink until the skin is drained, then lie there, droplets on my face. Every bone in my body aches.
Tassa takes a seat close beside me. She is silent for some while. Is she winded at all? Not even a little bit.
“They will slaughter you at Evisar,” she says at last.
“Probably,” I acknowledge. “But just think . . . I might make them flinch first.”
She shoots me a severe look. “Do you care so little for your life, human? Have you no one back in your own world whom you love?”
An image of a burnt prayer veil tangled in ashen limbs flashes across my mind’s eye.
I shake it away and prop up on my elbows, gazing out across the grassy sweep of country.
Almost unconsciously I draw Diira’s song around me, that song of healing which we share together at all times.
There’s still so much guilt in both our hearts—my loss of Aurae, hers of Ashika.
But in each other we have found harbors of forgiveness. And renewal.
At last I admit: “Not anymore.”
“So,” Tassa muses, “you throw your lot in with the desperate Licornyn.” She is silent again for a little while before adding, “And my brother? Is he a distraction from your own emptiness?”
Rolling onto my side, I scowl at her. “Why do you dislike me so much?”
Her eyes narrow. “You mean other than the simple fact that your people invaded our land, opened a rift into hell, and utterly wiped out three quarters of our entire population in a single stroke? Is this not reason enough for dislike?”
My stomach knots. “It wasn’t my doing. I wasn’t even born yet.”
“Yet you carry the blood of my enemies in your veins.”
I lie back once more, glaring up at the sky.
She doesn’t know how true those words are.
Taar told me what role my father played in the history of Licorna’s demise.
If Tassa or anyone else in the Hidden City were to find out I am Larongar’s daughter, what little good credit I have earned will vanish in an instant.
After a while I breathe out a sigh. “I know it should have been you.”
Tassa is silent, but there’s a questioning tension in that silence.
“I know you should have been the one to bond with Diira,” I continue. “You are a warrior. Brave and strong. And Licornyn-born. It should have been you.”
Tassa mutters in her own language, but the tone sounds very much like, “Damn right.”
“But . . .” I push myself upright, wrap my arms around my knees, and look out at Diira, who stands some way apart from us, her head upraised to catch the breeze, which blows through her dark mane.
“She chose me. Diira . . . and Taar too. Though I am all wrong for them both. They chose me anyway.” I turn my head, catching Tassa’s gaze.
“Do I not owe it to them both to try? To make myself worthy of their choice?”
She doesn’t have to say what she’s thinking.
I can see how deeply she feels my unworthiness.
But I can see as well that my words have moved her.
Slightly. She turns away from me, wordless, and I’m just as happy not to continue any verbal sparring for the time being.
Gods spare me, it’ll take the rest of the afternoon simply to catch my breath.
Eventually, however, Tassa interrupts her own long silence. “I am thankful she survived,” she says. “Nyathri, I mean. Diira. I may have wished the circumstances were otherwise, but . . . but I am glad she is no longer velrhoar.”
As she says this, her gaze shifts back up to the trees on the slopes of Elanlein.
I shade my own eyes and look. There’s a figure there, standing among the trunks.
Watching us. Halamar? I think it is he—the silent warrior whom Taar trusts implicitly.
I feel rather less warmly inclined toward him, as he is the one who knocked me out and threw me into that holding pit.
I suppose I’ll have to forgive him eventually.
He was only following orders, after all.
I glance at Tassa, chewing over my next words. But then, it’s not as though she can hate me more than she already does, can she?
“Do you still love him?”
If Tassa’s eyes were daggers, I’d be pinned to the ground.
A series of deflections and denials flash across her face.
One after the other she seems to discard them, only to turn away from me without speaking.
I begin to think she won’t answer me at all.
Then, abruptly, she says, “Velrhoar changes the soul. Those who experience it, even those who heal, are never the same again. Like Diira. She is no longer Nyathri, no longer the being she was before she experienced velrhoar.”
I understand. After all I am no longer the same girl I was before Aurae’s death. That girl is still inside me, but I am more now. A woman of grief, a woman of pain. A woman of survival, who is learning, moment by moment, how to overcome.
Even from this distance, I can hear Halamar’s song.
It’s so profound in its brokenness, but .
. . I find myself considering what strength it requires for a man that broken to rise each day and serve those around him.
To find reason, purpose. To simply place one foot before the other.
Just as my song and Diira’s are akin, so too is Halamar’s in its own way.
Only he has gone on without a healing bond. He may never find such healing.
“You didn’t answer my question,” I say softly.
Tassa snorts. “Do all humans presume familiarity where it has not been earned?” Before I can answer, she rises, hefts her stick, and looks down at me once more. “You are not without promise, bride of my brother. I will meet you here tomorrow and see what your limbs remember of today’s training.”
With that she turns and marches for her grazing gelding, leaving me behind.