Book 2: Chapter 18: Old Mother
Tellen himself rode out to greet Victor and Tha as they approached the camp. He pulled up on his rdii, giving them a long, questioning look before returning Victor’s called-out greeting. “Well met, Victor and Tha. I feared something had gone wrong when you didn’t return in the night.”
“Yeah,” Victor said, shading his eyes against the sun as he gazed up at the hunter. “Some things went wrong.” Victor saw Tellen nce briefly to the left and right, and that’s when he suspected something was very wrong. “What’s going on, Tellen?” he asked, putting a hand just beneath Lifedrinker’s head, lifting her in the leather loop ever so slightly.
“Oyna had a visionst night. A dark surge of Energy to the south. We need to make sure you are still you, Victor.” He nced at Tha and added, “and Tha.”
“Oh,” Victor rxed, letting his hand fall away from Lifedrinker. “That’s fine. What do you need? Want us to talk to Oyna?” Tellen visibly rxed as he saw Victor release Lifedrinker and whistled and made a gesture with one of his hands. A dozen Shadeni n members rose up from their hiding ces among the grassy tufts and watched the trio warily, arrows nocked in their bows but not drawn back. “Jeez, you really are nervous, eh?”
“I’ve never seen Oyna as upset as she wasst night, Victor, not to mention the strange lights in the air—evil portents.”
“Well, if it helps, I brought you some rdii,” Tha said, finally breaking her silence.
“An interesting gift to bring forth from poisonous ruins.” Tellen rode forward, looking more closely at the two stocky rdii. “Bred for draft work. We can find a use for them. Thank you, Tha.”
“Yeah, they weren’t from the ruins,” Victor chimed in, “but Tha earned them fair and square.”
“Follow me, please, and stay calm, so you don’t further rm my people.” Tellen turned and started toward the camp, maintaining a slow, walking pace on his mount. He led Victor and Tha directly to Oyna’s tent, and the old woman was sitting on a stool outside, poking at the coals of her fire. She looked up with squinting, wrinkled eyes and gestured to vacant stools and camp chairs around her fire pit.
“Sit down, and, Tellen, you can rx; they are themselves.”
“Ancestors!” Tellen released an explosive breath and leaped off his mount, striding over to Victor and offering him his hand. “I’m sorry, Victor, but we feared the worst.” Victor took his hand firmly and thumped the wiry man on the shoulder.
“Don’t worry. After what we sawst night, I understand why you’d be cautious.” He nodded to Tha. “We had an awful experience, and only half of it is due to those ruins and the phctery we brought into them. Tellen, I’ve done a lot of boneheaded things in my life, but walking through a mysterious portal with a death caster’s phctery is probably near the top.”
“You entered a portal?” Tellen asked.
“A portal?” Oyna crowed, chasing her words with a short cackle.
“Yeah, let me start at the beginning,” Victor said, sitting down next to Tha. He exined the portal they found, the strange, different version of the ruined vige, and the conversation with the Naghelli.
“Naghelli?” Tellen asked with a questioning look to Oyna.
“An ancient bloodline of the Ghelli. They thrived in darkness and fought for control of this continent during the great merging. My grandmother told me they were gone but always to keep a wary eye on the shadows.” For the first time Victor could remember, the old woman didn’t cackle after she spoke.
“This Belikot, he must be a powerful death caster, indeed, to send shards of himself off in the world. It’s not unheard of for powerful Energy users to split their souls in such a way, but for each shard to be so autonomous and powerful …” Oyna trailed off, looking around, then said, “He is not one to be trifled with. We should move to the autumn camp, Tellen.”
“Sorry for the bad news, but there’s more,” Victor said. “Powerful people are hunting us, and I can’t stop to help deal with this Naghelli shit right now.”
“There’s nothing to help with,” Tellen said. “We’re leaving—this is a problem for the empires and armies of the world. We hunt.” He shrugged like thosest two words exined everything.
“Right. I, uh, I guess I was thinking it would be cool if he could be dealt with before it became a matter for armies. You know, to avoid all the death and destruction thates with warfare.” Victor looked at Tha as he spoke and saw her squint her eyes, but he couldn’t tell if she was agreeing with him or not. She saw him looking at her and cleared her throat.
“Belikot needs to be stopped, but it’s not something we can handle right now. There might be months, years, or even decades before he makes his next move, Victor. Remember what we talked about? Priorities.” Tha spoke confidently, but she wore a scowl—she wasn’t happy about things.
“Yeah, we need to get to Gelica, Tellen. Sorry to dump this all on you, but it sounds like you guys will be moving on, anyway.”
“Yes, but I’ll post watchers on the ruins, and Oyna can speak with spirit casters in Gelica. They’ll give the word to the council, who can pass the word on to the Imperial Consul. If the Empire takes our warning seriously, they’ll no doubt issue a quest for the destruction or capture of the Naghelli lurking in the ruins, Belikot included.”
“Really? That makes me feel better about, you know, sort of running away,” Victor said. “Hey, Oyna, can you teach me how youmunicate with other spirit casters?”
“Hah!” She cackled again, and Victor was d to see the genuine amusement on her wrinkled, red face. “Two things you must know: the spell and the spirit caster with whom you wish to speak. I’ll teach you the spell, but I can’t help with the other part. Hah!”
“What about you? We know you,” Tha said, suddenly leaning forward, eyes hungry at the idea of learning a new spell.
“Oh, the fledgling wants to put her new affinity to use?” Sheughed again, rocking back and forth on her stool. “Come,” she said, atst, gathering her breath, “you’ll stay the night, and Oyna will show you one of her grandmother’s patterns. If you can copy it correctly, you’ll learn.”
“I have many preparations to make,” Tellen said, “Victor, Tha, I’ll leave you with Oyna. If I don’t speak to you again tonight, please find me in the morning before we part ways.”
“I will, Tellen, thanks.” Victor smiled at the angr, lean hunter, feeling a little guilty for the lines of worry and stress that creased the red flesh around his eyes. The hunter nodded and turned, leaving Victor and Tha with the grinning old woman.
Oyna was staring into her coals, running her fingers along the little carved bones hanging from her leather vest''s tassels. When Tellen had led away the three rdii, and Victor could no longer hear the sounds of their passage, Oyna looked up, squinting at Victor.
“Do you still have the skull where you trapped that piece of Belikot?”
“Yeah.” Victor nodded.
“Don’t remove it from that storage device until you are ready to face that problem. No doubt, the greater part of the whole will want all the pieces returned. That shard will be beyond his reach so long as you keep it tucked away—he won’t be able to feel it, but if he knows you have it, he might seek you another way.”
“Well, that’s a problem I’ll have to deal with eventually.” Victor shrugged. When he saw Tha’s pensive expression, he asked a question he’d been wondering about for a long time, “Is there a way to shield yourself from scrying spells?”
“Of course. You can learn spells to obscure your presence, though they require concentration. I’ve also seen traveling artificers selling wards, though most were fake or so weak that anyone with any strength could see past their obfuscations.”
“Do you know such spells?” Tha asked.
“Me?” Oynaughed again, not really a cackle, more a dry, throaty chuckle. “Oyna has never worried ‘bout people watching her. No, you’ll need to seek such protections elsewhere.”
“Oyna, you’re the only other spirit caster I’ve met. Aside from Tha, now, I guess. Can you teach me, I mean us, about spirit affinities and Cores?”
“Hah! You see whates of people forgetting the old ways? Each generation, even among the ns, we see fewer and fewer spirit Cores. More and more of the pearls and gemstones—Oyna can’t teach those! Even my daughter left! Living in Persi Gables of all ces! She’ll let things die out; just watch. No daughters, no sons—wasting her talent helping the rich forget their guilt and feel joy for a while.”
“It’s not that I didn’t want to learn, Oyna,” Victor said, trying to soothe her agitation, “I was kidnapped from my world and didn’t learn about my Core until I came here. No one I was with knew anything about it.”
“Mmhmm, mmhmm, and you’ve done a nice job building it up! Goodd, you are, Victor. You even gave this one some of the spirit,” she poked a bony finger into Tha’s knee. “You’re worthy of learning a thing or two!” She punctuated her words with a bark of harsh, high-pitchedughter. “So, you can make courage, eh? I sensed your rage. What’s your other affinity, warrior? What do you mix with rage to craft courage, hmm? Is it hope?”
“Hope? No, my other affinity is inspiration.”
“Hah!” Oyna pped her knee. “What a boon!”
“I only had rage, at first, but some ass …” Victor stopped himself, cleared his throat, and continued, “a nasty guy tried to break my Core, but I managed to rebuild it. When I gathered up the fragments, half of them were resistant to my rage affinity, so I had to sort of cultivate them with a different,” he looked to the sky, trying to think of the right word, “aspect of my spirit. That’s how I got the inspiration affinity.”
“Tribtions like that are how tempered, powerful spirit casters are made. You should find that man and thank him.” Oyna nodded, picking up a long stick to poke around in the ashes of her fire pit.
“I had entertained fantasies of finding him, though thanking him wasn’t something I’d considered …”
“What about me, Oyna?” Tha asked after Victor trailed off.
“Hmm? What, girl?”
“My Core is still a whisper ss Core, but I have a band of courage around the death-attuned Energy at the center.”
“Whisper ss, hmm? Yes, not bad! A Core dwelling on the borders of the veil and the spirit. You’ll never be as strong with spirit as your friend here, but much more versatile.”
“The veil?” Tha’s eyes were wide with interest as she leaned forward toward the old woman, who’d grown quieter as she spoke.
“Death, girl. What did you think when you gathered up that dark Energy? Did you think it would bring you closer to the flowers and trees? To love? No,ss, your Energy is meant to draw forth andpel remnants of spirits before they slip too far away from this ne.”
“I wish I’d known …”
“You’re lucky, though,” Oyna said softly, but her voice was matter-of-fact.
“How so?”
“You’ve not cultivated that side of your power at all. You’ve not bargained with any spirits other than the one that tried to dominate you. You can cultivate your courage affinity and learn to use your death affinity for a cleaner purposemunicating with spirits and putting them to rest, even those in the service of other death casters.” As the old woman exined herself, Tha sat back with a soft exhtion, clearly contemting her words.
“Oyna, can I learn other spirit affinities? Can I further split my Core?” Victor asked, filling the silence.
“Of course, but with versatilityes a cost. I can see that your two affinities are bnced nicely but consider: if you hadn’t split your Core, you’d have twice as much rage Energy as you do now. If you split your Core again, you’ll lose half the potency of whichever part of your Core breaks. Then there’s the possibility that you don’t have any other strong affinities. I imagine you found your rage easily, hmm? How about your inspiration? Did you have to dig further? There may be others, but I don’t know. We have rituals, though; you could seek guidance from powerful spirits.”
“Rituals?”
“Yes, boy. Weeks of preparation are required, though, and we’re not near one of our ces of power. Come visit me in our winter camp, maybe, hmm? Now, you want to learn to walk with your spirit? To talk to others like you?” Oyna reached a hand to the turquoise and polished bone ne she wore, and suddenly an ancient-looking, leather-bound sheaf of yellowed papers was in her hand. “You’ll need this spell anyway if you ever attempt a spirit quest.”
“Spirit …” Victor started to ask, but Oyna held up a hand as if to shush him.
“Let me find this,” she muttered, slowly thumbing through the thick, yellowed parchment, squinting carefully at each page as though she were trying to puzzle out a mystery scrawled there. Victor watched for a while and nced at Tha to see if she thought the old woman’s pursed lips and squinting eyes were as funny as he did, but she was still staring into space, clearly mulling over what Oyna had said earlier.
“Here!” Oyna said with a bark ofughter, pulling a sheet of paper out of the leather binder. She smoothed it out atop the binder on herp. “Pull that stool over here, please, warrior.” Victor did as she asked, dragging a stool to act as a table between the three of them. Oyna put the parchment down and turned it so that he and Tha could see the intricate pattern depicted in delicate red and ck lines.
“This is the spell?” Tha asked.
“Aye, girl. Do you have things to write with?”
“I do! I have notebooks and a spellbook that belonged to Belikot, or at least the fragment of him that we met in the dungeon.”
“You keep that tucked away for now, girl. You should spend your days and nights building up your courage attunement. When it zes brighter than your death affinity, then you can start to dabble with those magics. Do you hear me?” Oyna’s face lost its nearly ever-present crooked grin, and she stared at Tha until she nodded her head deeply, almost bowing to the older Shadeni.
“Yes, I understand.”
“Good!” she said, and Victor sighed, relieved to see the smilee back on her face as she cackled again. “Give yourrge friend a notebook; you both should copy this pattern. You’ll need to study and practice for a while before this spell will be yours. Might take you a few nights, might take you a year. Hah!”
“Will we know what to do when we finish the pattern? I mean, in our pathways?” Tha asked.
“No! Start copying, and I’ll exin.”
“I already have a notebook, Tha,” Victor said, pulling out the one he’d taken back in the dungeon so that he could work on his courage weave. Together, he and Tha started to scrawl out the pattern for the spell Oyna hadid out for them. Oyna cleared her throat and began to exin the magic while they worked.
“You must never practice this magic if you aren’t secure. Lock yourself in a hidey-hole, or have a friend watch over you! Tsk! Don’t ask why; I’m about to exin! When you cast this spell, your spirit will enter a ne adjacent to this one—the spirit ne. Your body will lie helpless, and you won’t be aware of anything happening to it. Do you see the danger? I hope so because if you didn’t, Oyna would be wasting her time on your soft brains.”
Victor grunted and kept concentrating on the delicate spiral he was currently drawing. Tha also made a sound of assent, and Oyna continued, “Distance on the spirit ne is different from this one. You also won’t be bound by the same limits that your physical body endures. You can travel great stretches of space with just a thought, and that’s how you canmunicate with distant spirit casters; if they expect you or make themselves avable at a certain time, you can think about them, think about moving toward them, and your spirit will make the journey in the matter of a few ‘steps.’”
“So we still walk around? As spirits?” Tha asked.
“Oh yes, your spirit will be bound to a form simr to your physical one, simply because that’s the construct your mind will be most familiar with. Experienced spirit walkers can change their form, which brings me to the next part of your lesson: beware of other spirits you meet while spirit walking.”
“We might run into others?” Victor took his turn to ask a question.
“Aye, warrior, and your axe won’t help you on that ne. You might meet a harmless, lost, wandering soul, or you might meet a predator—a spirit caster that feeds on those weaker than herself.” Herugh sounded ominous, and Victor nced up from his drawing to see a distant look in her eyes. “One such tried to take me when I was younger. Oyna bested him, though.” Herughter was deep and husky, and Victor could tell she was reliving a relished memory.
“Well, what do we do if we see someone like that?” Tha asked.
“Run! Fool girl, hah!” Oyna reached out and took up one of Tha’s long braids, giving it a gentle tug. “Don’t pout; Oyna is just teasing. This spell is easy to cancel; if you see danger, just end it, and your soul will rush back to your body. You must be quick, though—a true spirit hunter will have ways to bind you if you aren’t.”
Oyna spoke for a while longer, but then she returned to her tent to “prepare herbs,” and Victor and Tha kept working on their copies of her ancient spell parchment. Victor was surprised when he finished his copy before Tha was much further than halfway done. He spoke to Gorz for a while in his head while he waited for Tha to finish, and Gorz spected that Victor’s intelligence attribute was probably higher than Tha’s.
Victor thought Gorz might be correct, but when he looked at Tha’s copy of the pattern, he saw that she was shading the lines, whorls, and weaves of the pattern far more elegantly than he had, using different colors of ink, and he said, “You’re creating a work of art, there.”
“Well, it’s the first time someone ever let me copy something so precious. Think how old this spell is. Think about the honor of having this Old Mother share it with us. I want to save this in my spellbook for my daughter.” The way Tha said, “old mother,” was heavy with reverence, and Victor looked at his friend for a moment, realizing he’d missed something about her and the way she felt about Oyna.
“Did you have someone like Oyna in your family?” he asked.
“My father’s mother was sort of like her. Everyone respected her, but none of us could be bothered to learn from her. When she died, a lot of our family history was lost. If I could go back in time, I’d do things differently with her.”
“Ahh, yeah, I can see that. Oyna’s story about her daughter hit you kinda hard, huh?”
“I hope my daughter doesn’t resent me or refuse to learn what I want to teach her, Victor. I’m afraid the damage is already done, and I’ve missed too much time. I hope I can help her build a Core that uses this kind of magic—it seems special, Victor. It’s not like the cold, callous magic of a Sorcerer or an Elementalist. It’s not like the shy weapon skills used by many Hunters, Warriors, and Skirmishers. Spirit magic is a reflection of the caster; it’s a reflection of what they are.”
“Yeah, I guess so. What does that say about me, that my strongest affinity is with rage?”
“It means you’ve had a hard life! Victor, you’re so strong—you’ve shown me what a spirit caster can do, and yet, I’ve never seen you hurt someone that didn’t deserve it. Your second affinity is with inspiration! Think about that! You found inspiration when you were nothing but a ve, beaten down and nearly broken. What does that say about you?”
Victor opened his mouth to reply, but he couldn’t find the right words, so he just sat back and looked at the pattern Oyna had shared with them. It was beautiful andplex, and he wanted to start trying to build it with a strand of Energy in his pathways, but he felt he should wait until Oyna told them to. He decided to sit back, study it, and wait.
Tha smiled softly at his silence and kept doggedly working at her beautiful copy of the spell. Half an hourter, when she was finishing thest swirl, Oyna came out of her tent as if on cue, and she carried an ornate silver tray with a pot of steaming tea and three cups. “Good, good, daughter,” she said, ncing at Tha’s work. Victor saw Tha’s eyes widen at the old woman’s words, and he wondered how she felt. Daughter was definitely a loaded term where Tha was concerned.
Oyna looked at Victor’s copy of the spell and smiled, nodding. “This is clean and simple: a good reflection of your spirit, warrior.” She handed the tray to Victor, then reached down and scooped up her spell, clearing the little stool they’d used as a table. She gestured for Victor to set the tea tray on it, and after he’dplied, she said, “Now, we’ll try to spirit walk together, hmm? This tea will help focus you, and Tellen will watch over us. This is the best way to learn, children.”
“Now?” Victor asked.
“No, no. First, you need to build the pattern in your pathways, and when you feel it''s right, when you see your Energy ept it, and the nosy System tells you what you’ve done, then we’ll cast it and meet on the spirit ne.”
“So you were teasing about it taking us a year?” Tha asked.
“Yes, and I was snooping when you spoke to the warrior here. I want to meet your daughter, Tha, and I want to help her gain a spirit Core. Would you like that?”
“I …” Tha opened her mouth to speak but then stopped, clearly at a loss for words. “I think she’d …” again, she stopped, and Victor could hear the thickness in her throat and see that her eyes were welling with tears, and he looked down, self-conscious about staring when she was feeling such raw emotion.
“Hush, tut. Oyna forgets how sensitive young people can be. Don’t worry, daughter. We’ll talk many times before you bring her here. I’ll meet with your spirit, and we’ll make ns. You want to learn, yes?” Tha only nodded, wiping at her eyes, and Oyna shuffled over to her and pulled her into a hug. Tha’s head came up to her corbone, even sitting, and when Victor saw the smile on Oyna’s face and the tears streaming down Tha’s cheeks, his own eyes started to fill, and he rubbed the backs of his knuckles at them, taking a deep breath, happy to see such joy in a world that had, so far, demonstrated a great deal of the opposite.
“Better?” Oyna asked, stroking Tha’s braids.
“I am, thank you, Old Mother.” Tha sniffed, ncing at Victor and smiling when she saw his watery eyes. “What are you crying about, you softie?”
“What? It’s the smoke!” Victorughed and looked up at the stars, and, for the first time in a long while, he felt lucky to be where he was.