Blood Seed: Coin of Rulve Book One Read online

  “Once in a land far to the south, there was a small creek that ran over rocks and through fields until it came upon a vast desert. It tried to cross, but found that its waters merely sank into the sand. The creek swirled about, looking for a way through, but could not find one. Just as it was about to give up and become a quagmire, the sun spoke.

  ‘You can only save your life if you lose it.’

  The creek trusted the sun and stilled itself. It slowly dried up as the sun drew its water high into the air, until it was a cloud. The wind blew the cloud over the desert. There the cloud emptied itself in joy, and fell over the land as rain, and under it the desert bloomed.”

  As he read the tale of trust and sacrifice, his throat unaccountably filled with so much emotion his voice came near to cracking. The story, luminous yet full of pain, impaled him on a sweet-sharp point. As he finished reading, it seemed that a gentle hand pulled the blade out of him, and released the life that watered the thirsty ground.

  As if in a dream, he saw Ane lean back with a contented sigh. Mariat covered her with the cloak, a cloak as green as a desert in bloom. A clear thought broke over him: one day it would cover his body.

  “It’s getting on towards twilight,” Moro’s voice said. “Time you be leaving us, Sheft.”

  Chapter 7. A Long-awaited Messenger

  The next morning, Sheft dragged the box of his woodcarvings out from under the angle of the eaves in his loft and examined the household items inside. They were serviceable enough, but too plain. He decided to add a leaf design on the spoon handles and on the matching bowl. There’d probably be lots of children at the fair, so he’d make a few toys—little animals with features painted on. They could be set on wheels and pulled along with a string.

  He liked this last idea, so as the evenings grew longer, he carved several mice with round noses, ducks with open beaks, and then a smiling bee for Mariat. In the meantime, the path to Moro’s fieldhold became well-worn.

  His world was much brighter now, but his mother seemed to be living in an increasingly dreary one. She didn’t search the skies anymore and hardly ever spoke. After chores one day he told her he was going to Moro’s house to take Mariat the bee he had finished. Riah sat at the kitchen table, her eyes distant.

  “Invite her for dinner,” she said, much to Sheft’s surprise. “I will make rabbit stew.”

  Their family dinners were desultory affairs, and he wasn’t sure he wanted to subject Mariat to that, but he didn’t have the heart to discourage his mother’s effort to break her somber silence. “We’ll help you chop carrots,” he said, not too confident that the dinner would actually appear.

  “No need.” She moved her hand into a spot of sun on the table and stared at it. “It’s a beautiful day.”

  With Mariat’s bee in hand, he set out over the fields. A warm west wind tossed the hay, which was ripe and waiting to be cut. Perhaps tomorrow, if the weather cooperated. He scanned the sky and saw a few high, thin clouds coming over the Riftwood. Among them soared a falcon. One of truly enormous size, which he remembered having seen before.

  # # #

  It had been on a hot summer day when he was six. He’d gone down to where a little creek called the Wysher tumbled down from the southern hills and joined the Meera in its shallow, stately course. A thin boy about his own age—one he’d seen at the play-place by the mill—was splashing around a small sandbank that had formed where the creek met the river.

  This was Sheft’s favorite spot because he could stand with one foot in the cold Wysher water and the other in the warmer Meera. Now someone else had found it.

  The intruder looked up and saw him. His eyes widened, and then he waved his arms in a curious way.

  Puzzled, Sheft did nothing.

  “Eel eyes!” the boy shouted.

  “Cow eyes!” Sheft retaliated.

  “Pee head!”

  “Dung hair!”

  Frowning, the boy pinched his lower lip between his thumb and forefinger. “Hey, wait a minute. You can see.”

  “What? Of course I can see.”

  “Well, don’t look right at me like that. Your eyes are creepy.”

  “All right.” Sheft lowered his gaze.

  “Gwin said eyes like yours can’t see, except maybe shadows. Just like babies can’t really see until their eyes turn brown.”

  “That’s not true. I can see as good as anybody and maybe better.”

  “Prove it.”

  Sheft looked around, then in the sky above the Riftwood. “Do you see that bird way up there?”

  The boy shaded his eyes and squinted. “You mean that little speck? It’s a sparrow.”

  “No, it’s a giant falcon, and it’s higher than you think. Can’t you see the grey and white stripes under the tail?”

  “You’re just making that up.”

  “I am not! Once it flew over our barn, and I saw it up close. Its wings are big, way bigger than this.” He spread his arms wide.

  The other thought a moment. “You know, that would be big enough to carry off my little sister. Then I wouldn’t have to watch her anymore.”

  “Are you supposed to be watching her now?”

  “I guess,” the boy said, looking around. “She was here a minute ago. Oh, there she is.”

  A little girl, maybe three years old, had just launched a leaf into the water nearby. She straightened and stared at him.

  Sheft tensed and averted his eyes. He didn’t want her to burst into tears or run away.

  She did neither. After the first long, unblinking appraisal of him, she turned back to her play, as if he were a normal person.

  “That’s Mariat,” the boy said, “and I’m Etane. Let’s sit in the water.”

  They stripped down to their small-cloths and settled down in the shallows. Minnows soon appeared and began picking bubbles off their legs. Sheft tried and failed to catch one, then lowered an arm into the water to see if they’d come to it too. Etane searched among stones for water-bugs, occasionally calling to his sister to take something or other out of her mouth.

  “Why,” Etane suddenly asked him, “are you so ugly?”

  Sheft scooped up some pebbles and pretended to study them. “I don’t know.”

  “Pro’ly because you’re a foreigner.” Etane thought for a moment. “Do demons really talk to you?”

  “What’s a demon?”

  “I’m not exactly sure. Something bad, from how Gwin talks.”

  “Maybe you shouldn’t listen to him so much.”

  Mariat came wading up, clutching a wet, silver-colored stone. “Lookit,” she said to Sheft, holding it up to her eye. “Pretty eye. Like you’s.”

  Etane guffawed. “He’s got fish-eyes, Mariat. Ugly!”

  The little girl didn’t know any better, Sheft thought, but still he was pleased. She wandered off, and he lay back on his elbows in the water. He looked past Etane and idly scanned the edge of the Riftwood across the river. He caught sight of something, and his heart lurched. From out of the brush, a face covered with dead leaves grinned at him. It was Wask, emerging from his nightmares and into broad daylight. He sat up with a splash.

  “Hey!” Etane grinned and splashed back.

  The face resolved into a tangle of leaves and shadows.

  Relief washed over him and Sheft found himself in the middle of a water-fight. It ended only when Mariat, who had been splashing with gusto, stumbled up to her waist in a hole, panicked, and had to be rescued. After things settled down, he and Etane sat in the water again while Mariat brought handfuls of sand and dumped them over Sheft’s foot. Etane glanced at him with a dark I-have-a-secret look. “You want to hear something my dad told me?”

  He wasn’t sure he wanted to hear anything scary—his dreams were scary enough—but he couldn’t help but ask, “What?”

  “Something that happened last spring. You know, that time when the Groper came out?”

  Across the river, dark tree branches stirred in the breeze, like the feelers
of giant, blind insects trying to detect his blood. He knew. But he could never tell Etane about it.

  The other boy continued his story. “Well, a few days after that, there must’ve been a rain up north, and something got washed down the Wind-gate.” That was a usually dry, boulder-filled gully that came out of the Riftwood just past the village. Etane leaned toward him, his eyes big.

  “And that something was bones.”

  “Bones!”

  “That’s what Gwin and Voy found. Bones, my Dad said, of a ‘squat, man-like creature.’”

  Could these creatures, Sheft wondered, have something to do with the far-off cries he heard? Maybe—the idea rasped over his spirikai—these creatures were hurting people. “Do you ever hear, uh, voices coming from there?” He nodded toward the Riftwood.

  “Human voices?”

  “Well, yes.”

  “Where’ve you been?” Etane asked incredulously. “Humans don’t live in the Riftwood.”

  “Oh. Yeah. I guess they wouldn’t.”

  “You don’t really hear voices, do you?” Etane drew back from him and wrinkled his nose. “Are you crazy or something?”

  “I’m not anything! I was just asking.” It was time to change the subject, so he said the first thing that came into his head: “I hate emptying the night-pot.”

  “I do too. My mother always fusses when I spill any, even a little.”

  They continued to discuss chores they particularly disliked until Etane suddenly jumped to his feet. “I’ve got to show you something. My dad likes to play Double-sides, and he won this most amazing horse. C’mon and see.”

  Their route to his house took them past a lone black boulder that stood between the river and the edge of the fields. It was called The Palm, but Tarn said it had another, older name—the K’meen Arûk. The rock was about as high as a man’s waist, one stride long, and relatively flat. Nothing grew around it, and not even snakes would sun themselves on it. There was a depression on top where rainwater collected. As the water dried up, it left behind a reddish, foul-smelling slime. The three of them gave it wide berth.

  “My dad told me that rock is the palm of the Groper’s hand,” Etane said. “A long time ago, the priestess used to put eyes in there.”

  “Eyes!” Sheft wondered if he had heard aright.

  “People’s eyes,” Etane said with relish, “for the mist to eat. On certain nights the Groper still comes here, looking for eyes. Even though we have the Rites.”

  An uneasy feeling coiled through his spirikai. “What are these Rites?”

  “I’m not sure. We won’t find out ‘til we’re eighteen.”

  Mariat, who had been holding her brother’s hand as they walked, now took Sheft’s. In spite of the foreboding that had settled over him, her little hand in his gave him a warm feeling. Someone had come to him, in trust, for protection.

  When they got to Etane’s house, a large man whose shirt bulged over his stomach was standing outside the barn, brushing down the biggest horse Sheft had ever seen. As they approached, the man turned to stare at him. Sheft tensed and lowered his eyes.

  “We made a new friend, Dad,” Etane announced, and Mariat pulled Sheft forward. “See hosie,” she explained.

  Sheft glanced up to see the man’s grin. “Well, new friend. I’m Moro. This here ‘hosie’ is Surilla. Not the prettiest girl around, but a stronger plow-horse than any of the villagers own.” He ran his hand over the mare’s sleek brown neck. “This one’s actually going to earn us a few coppers. I’m going to rent her out for plowing. It’s time someone gives Delo’s ox a little competition.” He scratched his round chin and then told them a curious thing.

  “This mare can be guided with three magic words. If you want her to go left, you say eechareeva. Right is as, and forward is ista. Now isn’t that a marvel!” He set both boys on Surilla’s back—Mariat was too little—and let them try it out.

  Sheft was amazed. The mare was a wonderful beast and brought to his mind the mighty steeds pictured in the red book of tales. After Etane’s mother Ane made them lunch and had settled Mariat down for her nap, Sheft decided to show the book to Etane, even though he knew he shouldn’t. Books were valuable objects, so Riah kept it out of his reach on the mantle. It had a strange name: the Tajemnika. This meant, his mother said, “Regarding the Heart.”

  Back at Sheft’s house, he dragged a chair over to the fireplace. First wiping his hands on his pants—fortunately so, for they left a grimy stain—he climbed up, retrieved the heavy book, and took it to the kitchen table. It was bound in thick, red leather, and contained not only stories, but also pictures. Etane’s mouth fell open in awe at the sight of them.

  One showed a man standing with his back to a field in which children played among lacy-leaved flowers. The man looked sad, and the scene behind him was drawn in faint lines, as if the man were remembering a happier time, long gone. Could this man be one of those people whose cries the wind brought?

  The next page was covered by a complicated picture of many parts, done, amazingly, in colors. But it was a terrible picture. At the bottom a village was engulfed in red and yellow flames, and was surrounded by short, boar-men with bows and arrows. Above this were blue wavy lines meant to be a river, and then big wooden gates of a fortress built into a cliff. Dark green ivy climbed all over the walls, but on top of the cliff grew rows and rows of strange plants that bristled with prickly leaves and stems. Their flowers were evil-looking—purple and hairy and far too big—and spiders crouched among them. At the top of the page stood a crowned man, and people knelt before him. Sheft looked closely at the man’s face, and a chill ran down his arms.

  He had no eyes.

  A shadow fell over the book. Sheft looked up to see his mother standing in the doorway.

  “Uh,” Etane said quickly, “he took the book down. I never touched it!”

  “But first I wiped my hands!”

  His mother sat down across from them and, to his relief, Sheft saw she was his real mother, and not angry. “Some of these stories are not for children to read,” she said. “They’re written in Widjar and tell about another place and a tragic time.”

  Etane told her about the magic words that Surilla obeyed, and they turned out to be Widjar too. Seeing his mother’s good mood, Sheft asked her to read them a story, and she agreed. Etane grinned, his eyes shining with expectancy, and the two boys gathered close around Riah.

  And so he heard the story of Remeld of the Dark Hand, and it filled his head and heart. The tale was laid out before him, about a knight with golden hair, brother to the king. The king’s new wife had been abducted by Dol the Sorcerer and imprisoned in his tunnels, and Remeld rode to her aid. After many hardships, he led her out, leaving behind in trade his own right hand.

  # # #

  Now, years later and on his way to Moro’s house with Mariat’s carved bee under his arm, he found it strange that the memory of a story heard so long ago could still stir something in his spirikai.

  # # #

  Sheft had been gone for some time before Riah managed to gather up the energy to start dinner. They rarely had guests for dinner, so different from how it had been when she was growing up. She missed eating in the community dining room, the passionate conversations, the feeling of unity that arose when people endured hardships together. They’d all been immersed in a cause that gave their lives meaning, and she’d never felt alone. Except for that one terrible time when… She shook her head to rid herself of the memory.

  Adding a small handful of salt, she stirred the pot. The pink pieces of rabbit meat were just starting to turn grey and bits of thyme and chopped onions swirled around the wooden spoon. The water came to a boil and she pushed the iron cook-arm to the edge of the fire to reduce it to a simmer.

  “Riah! Come forth.”

  She froze. The words resounded in her head as clearly as if they had been spoken aloud: Kyra, the thought-language of the falconforms. Tossing the spoon onto the table, she ran into the vegeta
ble garden. The giant creature landed in a whirlwind of feathers and wings. It towered over her, and the tip of its dagger-sharp beak, with a frown built into its base, hovered an arm’s length above her head.

  Breathless, she tilted her head back and met the fierce, golden gaze. “Where is Drapak?” she cried. “And who are you?”

  “I am Yarahe, son of king Drapak.”

  “For twelve years I’ve looked for him! How could your people abandon me?”

  “Enmity sprung up between our people and yours. I would have come, but my father forbade me to leave Shunder. Now one of our eyries has been grievously attacked, and an alliance has been made between us against the Spider-king.”

  “What of my son?” she cried. “What of my mother?”

  The wind ruffled the white feathers above the falconform’s hooded, far-seeing eyes. “Se Mena grieves for you, and for both her grandsons.”

  “‘Both?’” A lump formed in her chest. “What do you mean? Teller should be safe in the Seani.” All that they’d done, all these years of separation, was supposed to ensure that.

  “I am sorry. Your son has passed away from us.”

  A long chill slipped down her spine. “Oh Rulve!” she breathed. “Oh God, how could that happen?”

  “It was twelve years ago, on a day in Acorn. Se Celume foretold it, but we”—his gaze shifted aside, as if with a pang of memory, then returned—“I could not prevent it. The Seah—”

  He continued to speak, but she no longer heard him. Her child, her dark little boy, was dead. Twelve years ago! He would have been only six years old. Why didn’t she feel his dying? Why didn’t she know?

  A cold feeling passed over her. Sheft had known. That nightmare he’d had in Acorn, when he was only six years old—a dream of wings and a bell. He had felt it, felt the same wrenching loss that she was feeling now, and she had paid no attention. Oh God, it was the synchronicity of twins. It must have affected Sheft his entire childhood, and she had never noticed. The sunny day around her drained away, and the darkness she fought so hard began to bleed through everything. Her son was dead.

  “—many summers the Seani was immersed in grief. But now the compound has recovered, and Sheft will soon be summoned home. Rulve has need of him. With Teller gone, he is Shunder’s last hope. He must be educated in the Seani, and his power discerned. Have you told him who he is?”