Chapter 9 Sixteen Years Ago
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Sixteen Years Ago
The swaddled baby from the woods became a little boy, and the little boy learned the word for what was wrong with him.
Compeller, whispered like a curse, like a death sentence.
The little boy did not understand how abnormal it was for the world to bend to his will, to live a life of no friction. He simply watched with vague interest as other mages rearranged themselves around him, like a river flowing around a rock.
Although he could have commanded anything, his wishes were fairly asinine. An extra serving of a meager dinner. Playing past bedtime in the Havenwood. Always his board game of choice, which he would invariably win—much to his older brother’s ire.
Said brother also had a Compeller’s instinct, the boy thought.
Sometimes there was a sort of resistance, a grating feeling, when the boy tried to warp his brother’s will.
Two swords clanking together, spraying white-gold sparks.
The boy from the woods always won, of course.
He was simply too powerful, and any blocks or parries were usually short-lived.
But the brother had something—a flint hovering over dried twigs, an ember afraid to leap higher.
The two were thick as thieves. They built dens from snapped branches and old threadbare cloaks, made a pirate ship out of a rotten crate they found in a deadfall.
They stole a map from the Rezarans’ resident Healer, jabbed briar thorns through all the places they might venture once grown.
The southern tip of Mersina, a valley in Laudon, the craggy heart of Nomaden.
Shishai and Soral and Suva. A speck-sized island in the Ashen Narrows.
The world was so vast, and their lives were so small.
Neither brother understood the enormity of why they were in hiding, of course. They heard murmurings, but lacked the broader context.
Their parents disappeared for days on end.
Often they would return bedraggled, injured even, but always richer in one thing: ascenite.
Pearlescent coins by the pocketful, the crateful.
A stockpile was built at the center of the tunnels snaking beneath their encampment, guarded by a feral fallowwolf who’d taken a shine to Lorissa Rezaran.
Their numbers grew in kind. The new recruits treated Lorissa with a kind of religious fervor—bowed heads and reverent whispers, a curious swish-flick of their wands to represent their devotion—as though she were a deity in her own right. But to the boy from the woods, she was simply Mother.
One warm summer night, Lyrian and Lorissa departed on a quest to Sorvel, a small northern village overlooking Fair Firth.
A kindly old crone by the name of Candin was minding the brothers, ensuring they stayed in their beds and did not get up to mischief.
Candin, however, was prone to sudden bouts of unrousable slumber, exacerbated by the immense quantities of flamebrandy with which she spiked her evening ambertea.
Before long, the brothers were creeping out the front door and into the vast woods beyond.
The shadows in the forest were long and bruise-colored, the canopy trilling with havendoves.
Bare feet skimmed over gnarled roots, black cloaks flapping around skinny ankles, the quiet of dusk draped over the forest like a blanket.
The boy from the woods, now five years old, wore a neat deminite bracelet—nowhere near as heavy or intrusive as the ankle manacles from his birth parents, but enough to temper his power.
A precaution, Lorissa Rezaran said. The boy suspected it was largely because of the flamboyant wolftrot he’d encouraged his adoptive mother to perform in the midst of an argument with her husband.
Lorissa Rezaran did not like to be undermined, and she certainly did not like to be made to look a fool.
“What shall we do?” his brother asked, voice low and conspiratorial in the eerie woods.
He was seven years old and mid growth spurt, limbs long and gangly, hips too narrow for his newfound height.
He was quiet, earnest, a little cowardly, always lost in his rich inner life.
The boy from the woods loved him very much, because he had never once made the adopted child feel like a black swan, like an afterthought.
They were just brothers, as simple and as complex as that.
The younger boy peered up at the nearest wyrmwood, studying its snarled ladder of branches. It was the tallest in the forest, head and shoulders above its nearest companions. “I wonder if we could see Bellandry from the top of that tree.”
“We wouldn’t know—the Havenwood covers the border.”
“The other way. Over Fair Firth to Brasden.”
“I’m not climbing it, and neither are you.”
“Chickenheart.”
“Yes, yes. I’m a wimp, a featherweight. Any other insults you want to throw at me? They won’t work, but they might make you feel better.”
Frustration surged in the younger boy, a reservoir threatening to overflow a dam. He took a step toward the foot of the tree, where its roots were knotted and protruding from the earth. An inkmouse scuttled over his bare ankle, but he did not flinch. “Suit yourself. I’m going.”
“No! We can’t get hurt. Perant is always low on magic, and if Mother or Father are injured on their mission, our only Healer can’t have wasted his power on broken bones.”
Such logic was of little interest to the younger boy.
His limbs twitched with a sort of ingrained restlessness he’d been plagued with ever since he’d learned to walk—the need to be on the move, to be stretching himself, to feel his lungs tighten and his blood pound.
He was an addict at five years old, adrenaline his drug of choice.
He took another step forward.
The older brother’s hand went to the spindly wand tucked in his waistband. He’d been given it a year prior, when he turned six, but wasn’t entirely sure how to use it yet.
The younger boy, who knew this, scoffed. “What are you going to do? Fail to cast a basic levitation spell?”
Redness rushed to the older brother’s cheeks. “I’m still bigger and stronger than you.” But he said this uncertainly—he was all angles, while his brother was shorter, stockier, more determined.
“If you’re so big and strong, you climb it.”
There was too much strength behind the words; he knew the moment they left his lips.
It was a command.
Which shouldn’t have mattered, because he was wearing a deminite bracelet.
And yet slowly, terribly, his brother started to climb.
His limbs shook, and he cast a horrified glance over his shoulder at the ground below. The wand tumbled from his hand. “Please. Don’t. Let me down.”
But the younger boy did not retract his inadvertent order—whether through shock, or thrill, or something darker still. He simply stared down at the slender bracelet and marveled at what he was able to do despite it.
“It’s not funny,” the older boy muttered, climbing higher and higher. “I know I don’t want to do this. I know it’s you. Let me down.”
The younger boy fought the smile plucking at the corner of his mouth. “Not until you can see Brasden.”
Two things took root in the Rezaran boys that night.
In the swaddled baby from the woods, a vast and bottomless self-loathing.
And in his adoptive brother, a fear that would simmer and swell for many years to come.