The Eighth Warden Bk. 02 Ch. 03-04

"I'm sorry, girls," Kelis said. "I'm afraid my stories aren't as interesting as Shana's. I only fought bad people. I saw a snow beast once, from a distance, but I didn't have to fight it. Treya?"

Treya couldn't tell if Shana was trying to recruit the girls into the Order or scare them away from it, and it took her a moment to decide what to talk about. The fight with the ogres had been over before she could get involved, and she didn't want to mention the red-eyed men to the little girls. Shana had already described a drake, so Treya went with the next best thing.

"I guess the scariest would be the skeleton...but it was a skeleton of a huge bear. It was twelve feet long, and even on all fours, its back was almost as tall as the top of my head."

"How did you fight it?" a girl asked.

"Umm, well, I cast a spell to make it stop moving. Once it couldn't move anymore, my friend hit it with a sword." Now that Treya thought about it, that story didn't exactly show off her mystic abilities.

The same girl crinkled her brow. "You're a wizard?"

"More like a priestess, but I'm a mystic too. Sometimes I fight, and sometimes I do other things."

The students were dismissed after that, and Treya was left alone with the other women.

Shana burst out laughing. "You cast a spell and then your friend hit it with a sword? Do we need to take you back out to the practice yard?"

Treya winced. "Actually, that's something I wanted to talk to you both about. Do you have time?"

"Sure," Shana said.

Kelis nodded. "I'm not teaching any more classes today."

Treya sat at one of the tables and took a deep breath, trying to put her thoughts in order. She hadn't decided on exactly what she wanted to say yet, but with Shana being in town, she didn't want to miss out on the chance to talk to her.

"I guess...I'm having trouble being a mystic. You both know about my magic. It's getting stronger. That thing with the bear skeleton actually happened—I told it to stop and it did, but after that, I was too tired to fight it myself. The healing is getting stronger too. About a week back, we were in a little village that got attacked by ogres. The people there needed healing, so I took care of that while my friends made plans to defend the town from another attack. I should have been with them, helping with the planning. You would have been with them, Shana. But I had to be where I was instead—I couldn't not help those people."

Shana and Kelis had joined her at the table while she spoke. Shana said, "That's a tough one. You still don't know which of the gods blessed you, or why?"

"No. I have no idea what I'm supposed to be doing or how I'm supposed to do it."

"You're not thinking of leaving the Order, are you?" Kelis asked.

"No!" Treya protested. "Being a mystic is everything I've been working toward for years. I've never wanted to be anything else."

"Then maybe you need to think of yourself as a new kind of mystic," Kelis said. "If you're healing someone, you're fighting to save them, but in a different way. You just have more ways to fight than we do. You have to use your best judgment to decide when to fight one way and when to fight another way. That's what it always comes down to in the end—use your own judgment to make the best decisions you can."

Shana nodded. "That's a good way to think about it."

"But isn't it a distraction?" Treya asked. "You've both said I need to eliminate all my distractions, so I can focus on learning who I am, but I'm not making any progress. I can't do the kinds of things you can do, and I have to depend on my magic even for a simple fight."

"Maybe that is who you are," Shana said. "Look, magic isn't the only distraction you have, right? What about the jobs you take, or the people here, or thinking about what you're going to have for supper tonight?"

"Well, sure, and also the friends I've been traveling with. I like having company out on the road, but it's changed things for me. I don't know how I'm supposed to find myself when I'm constantly thinking about everyone else. I don't have time to do my exercises; I don't even have time to meditate if I need to take a watch shift during the night."

"Let me tell you how I do it. When I'm here," Shana circled her hand around to indicate the chapter house, "I take interest in others. I have friends; I allow myself to be distracted. When I'm out there, I'm different. I travel alone. I carry nothing but the clothes on my back and a few coins for food. I don't bring a coat or a cloak because the weather doesn't bother me—I don't allow it to. I don't ride a horse because I can run faster and longer on my own legs. There's just me and the next job. You could argue that the job is a distraction, but I would say that it's a purpose, and what's the point of life without a purpose?"

"But I know all that," Treya said. "That's how I know I'm doing it wrong."

"Ahh, but that's my purpose. What's yours?"

"What do you mean?"

"For me, my purpose is the job. That is, until I get home, and I remember that my real purpose is the people here. I know myself by knowing my friends, so are those friends truly a distraction, or are they part of me? What's your purpose?"

"I guess I don't know."

"A smart answer," Shana said with a grin. "You'll learn your purpose as you learn yourself. Maybe your new friends are part of your purpose, or maybe they can teach you something about yourself, or maybe they're just a temporary distraction. Only you will be able to determine that. Kelis's purpose was to come back here and train the next generation."

"No, I just decided my purpose was to not freeze to death in the middle of the wilderness," Kelis said. "Not all of us have mastered the mystic arts as well as you. Teaching students is actually my distraction—it distracts me from my warm bed."

Shana laughed. "Maybe. One thing though, Treya..."

"Yes?"

"Make time to do the damned exercises. Kelis taught them to you for a reason. The meditation, too."

Treya grimaced. "I'll try."

Kelis cleared her throat and stared pointedly.

"All right, all right. I'll make time. Somehow."

"That's better," Shana said. "Now, where are you off to next?"

"Up north to Lanport and the Storm Heights."

"You've got a job up there?"

"Well, I'm not getting paid for it, but there are some things I've got to do. It's a long story."

"Any plans after that, or are you just going to show up here again in a few weeks?"

Apparently Treya's rather haphazard approach to journeying was going to be a source of amusement to her friends for a long time to come.

"We haven't decided yet," she said. "It depends what we find in the mountains. There was some talk about crossing the northern plains, but I don't know if they'll really want to do that in the middle of winter."

"I visited the plains during my journeying," Kelis said. "They can be strangely charming. The people are rough, but they don't mind outsiders—most of them are outsiders, one way or another. And when you're out on the real plains, the prairie, it can be desolate, with no trees or mountains anywhere in sight, and the sky is huge and overwhelming. It makes you realize how small you are."

"But don't get involved with all the little wars up there," Shana added. "Just because you make friends in one town doesn't mean you should sign on when they decide to raid the next town over."

"I'd never do that!" Treya said.

"Sometimes it can be hard to say no, so just keep it in mind."

"By the way," Kelis said, "what's this about some magic spell on your head, and why did I have to hear about it from Nina?"

Treya sighed. "That's the long story I mentioned..."

#

In a city as large as Tyrsall, almost anything could be found, even a tavern that catered to demonborn. Razai shed her disguise as she walked through the door. She headed to the bar, ignoring the boisterous mix of humans and demonborn gambling in the back of the room.

"Whiskey," she said to the bartender, a man named Meklos, as she placed a coin on the counter.

"Don't I know you?" said another man who stood nearby. He was seven feet tall and well-muscled, with short horns sticking up from his temples. A blonde human woman hung off his side, smirking at Razai.

"Vash," she acknowledged.

"Razai. It's been a long time. That Valaran job, right? I almost didn't recognize you. You did something with your hair."

She rolled her eyes. "I cut it." Vash would flirt with any woman around, but at least he didn't take rejection badly. He never had a problem finding a bit of skirt.

"We made a lot of coin in Valara," he said. "You got a line on any more jobs like that?"

"I thought you were going legitimate."

"I did, but some little worm convinced me to invest in his trading company. Or at least that's what he called it. The idiot didn't know what he was doing and ended up losing it all. He took off with everything he could get his hands on while I was out running one of our caravans." Vash shrugged and patted a battle axe that was leaning up against the bar. "He's dead now. I could have used you—it took me a year to track him down."

"I don't know of any jobs," she said. "I'm not working for myself right now."

A hand grasped her shoulder and she whirled, grabbing the man behind her and slamming his face against the bar, then kneeing him in the chin on his way down. Vash's blonde screeched and clung to his arm. The noise in the back of the room stopped as everyone turned to watch.

Growling, Razai drew her daggers and looked down to find an older demonborn man in tattered clothing, his nose bleeding and one of his protruding canine teeth broken off.

"Jus' wan'ed some ale," the man slurred, looking up at her.

"Hells of my fathers, Razai!" Vash exclaimed. "He's just a beggar."

Razai grimaced and sheathed her daggers, forcing herself to calm down. Sometimes she thought the rage was the true curse of her people, more so than their appearance.

"That's old man Oldin," the barkeep said, coming around to help the man up. "He's harmless."

"I'm sorry," Razai said to the beggar, pulling a handful of silver coins from her belt pouch and setting them on the counter. "For your trouble and for a healer."

"Don' need a healer. Jus' need some ale. Or whiskey's good. I'll have some whiskey." Oldin blearily pushed one of the coins across the bar.

"You're in your cups already, and that blow to the head's just going to make it worse," the bartender said, gathering up all the coins and tying them into a handkerchief before handing them to the man. Then he faced the back of the room and shouted, "Someone take Oldin to find a healer!"

"I will if you cover my tab, Meklos!" another demonborn called back.

The bartender growled, but then nodded curtly.

Razai leaned her elbows on the bar and rested her head against her clasped hands as Oldin was prodded out of the bar by the other man.

"Hells," Vash said once they were gone. "What's wrong with you?"

She looked up. "I don't like to be touched!"

"Oldin's one of us."

"Then he should know better!"

Vash shook his head. "You need to relax. What have you been up to, anyway? I heard you'd gone hellside for a while."

"I'm working for my father."

He growled low in his throat. "Bad business. I thought you were out of that."

"Things change."

"No wonder you're so tense."

The woman tugged on his sleeve. "Vashi, let's go. I'm tired of this place."

"Yes, all right. Razai, take care, and try not to murder one of us by accident. If you hear of any decent jobs, I'll be around. Some gang's been going after the seaborn divers when they come in with their catch, so the divers have started hiring bodyguards. The pay's not great, but it's better than nothing."

Vash left, with his blonde still hanging on his arm. Razai looked toward Meklos, but he just glared at her and shook his head. She didn't recognize anyone else in the place.

She looked down at her untouched drink. So much for trying to catch up with old friends.