Varna Ch. 10

There were only ten of them, but their arrival obviously meant a great deal to Gerdar Tanle. Enneiros and Alissara also acted very deferentially. I began to suspect that this might be much more important than their numbers would indicate.

They looked like elves, to me. Their leader, Naevys, was tall and thin, dark-haired and bushy browed. He was not particularly handsome, unlike Rhigen, the only fey I'd ever met. If Naevys was using a glamour to conceal his true features, he'd chosen a very modest appearance for himself.

Gerdar Tanle greeted him very warmly. They bowed to each other, standing several feet apart. Rhigen had told me that a fey would not shake hands with a human, for fear of the touch of our rings.

I exchanged bows with him as well. Then Glasha did the same. Naevys smiled for the first time.

- "I am pleased to meet you, beautiful spirit." he said. "And I would have words with you, anon. But I have come to meet your man, if you will allow it."

- "We are honoured that you've come." said Glasha. "You don't need my permission."

- "Yet I ask it."

- "Then I grant it, gladly."

Naevys bowed to her again. "Will you walk with us, Lord Tauma?" he asked.

- "Us?"

- "Rhigen will accompany me."

Two fey, and me. No - I didn't suspect treachery. The fey had natural magic. Had they wished to harm me, they could have done so from a distance, or from ambush. There was something else going on here.

I didn't want to offend the fey, yet I suspected that we were joined in some kind of formal dance. There were rules that I didn't know. But I risked a guess.

- "May I bring a companion, as well?" I asked.

- "Of course." said Naevys. He didn't appear to be the least bit put out.

- "May I bring Saska Tanle?"

Both Naevys and Rhigen nodded. Naevys seemed moderately pleased.

My new wife had learned of the fey from her mother. She had great respect for them. But she also sensed that there was something new at play, here. She took my hand, and we followed Rhigen and Naevys.

Glasha's father led us to the spot where he'd practiced magic with me.

Saska knew that I could perform magic. I'd told her about my studies in Elmina, with Durgulel - how long ago that seemed, already. She also knew that Glasha could time-walk, and that Rhigen had taught us both.

- "May I ask a favour, Lord Tauma?" said Naevys.

Beware of the fey. Never make a bargain with them. I knew these sayings. But I also knew Glasha, and Rhigen. Would he have led me here in order to put me in harm's way? And if I didn't like what Naevys asked, I was still at liberty to refuse, wasn't I?

- "Go ahead."

- "Rhigen told me what you did, with the stone on the stump. May I ask if you would do it again, so that I might see?"

- "Is this a test?" I asked. I'd had enough of those with my father.

- "No." said Naevys. "Rhigen told me what you did. I believe him. But I would like to see it for myself. Call it curiosity. That is why I ask it as a favour."

I couldn't see a problem with his request. I consulted with Saska, holding her close, and whispering in her ear.

- "Should I do this?"

- "It seems important to them. Is it dangerous for you?"

That was good enough for me. Saska and I were attuned.

Rhigen placed another stone on the very same tree stump. I began gathering the aether, as both Naevys and Saska watched.

My wife was wide-eyed, at first. But I had Naevys' rapt attention, as well - and I hadn't done anything yet. At that point, the fey spoke.

- "I have no doubt, Lord Tauma, that you could punch or kick that stone from the stump. I can see it. May I ask, though - could you lift the stone up, and drop it a few feet away?"

It didn't seem like much to ask. Perhaps Naevys didn't want me to damage any of the trees nearby. All I had to do was re-shape the aether, so that I wasn't imagining a boot, a fist, or a club. For some reason, the image of a spatula popped into my head. Then I thought of a fishing net.

I shaped the aether into a spatula, and slid it under the stone, as if I was cooking an egg. Then I changed the spatula into a fishing net, so that I could lift the stone without tipping or spilling it off. Somehow, I thought that if the stone simply toppled off the stump, the fey would not be particularly impressed.

The fishing net worked perfectly. I lifted the stone off the stump, carried it a few paces away, and then dropped it on the ground.

Saska beamed at me. She actually clapped her hands once, and then put them behind her back. I couldn't read Rhigen's expression, but Naevys smiled.

- "Thank you, Lord Tauma." he said. "It was very kind of you to grant my favour, however small. May I offer you a small favour in return?"

Interesting. The fey did not like to be beholden - even the littlest bit.

- "Certainly. May I ask why you came to Souglad, Lord Naevys?"

I was guessing again. It was the deference paid to him by Rhigen, by Gerdar Tanle, and by the elves that made me wonder. Who was he?

- "That is a very significant question, which I cannot answer today. May I offer a smaller favour - one more in keeping with what you just did for us?"

- "What did you have in mind?"

Naevys smiled again. "Would you like to see what the fey truly look like?"

He had me. My curiosity was boundless. I didn't even know what Glasha's father looked like. I was sure that Saska would want to see, too.

- "If ... if that would be a fair exchange." I said.

- "I think it is." said Naevys. "Rhigen?" he asked.

- "As you see fit." said Glasha's father. There it was again - that deference. Who was Naevys?

I felt a slight stirring of the aether, and Naevys seemed to blur and transform before me. His hair wasn't dark; it was blacker than pitch, and it moved of its own volition. Naevys had no bushy eyebrows, either.

His skin was almost translucent. His face was thinner than I would have thought possible; it was all sharp edges, narrow and angular. His eyes were unfathomable pools, ancient and wicked.

I had to look away. But then I saw Rhigen, without his protective glamour. He was built like a stone pillar, with skin the texture of rough tree bark from a mature poplar. His face, though, was the most shocking: Rhigen looked like a knotted tree trunk with eyes.

Naevys hadn't repaid a favour with a favour. It was a test, followed by another test. Could I perform his magic trick? And then could we bear to look at them, as they truly were?

Or was it a gesture, on their part? A show of trust, to let us see their true natures? I reached out for Saska's hand, and drew her to me.

- "Is this a test?" I asked her.

- "Yes." she said. "And no. I don't know why they've done this, Tauma. But they've just bared their true selves. It's ... it could be a sign of trust."

- "Your Lady speaks true." said Naevys, even as he re-asserted his glamour and resumed the shape of a dark-haired elf.

- "Let's re-join the others." said Rhigen.

- "I don't like being tested." I said. "Nor do I enjoy being kept in the dark."

- "Then let us bring it all into the open." said Naevys.

We walked back to the Gerdar's house, to find a gathering awaiting us. Gerdar Tanle. Alissara and Enneiros. Glasha and Yazgash. Hurmas and Sezima, looking slightly bewildered.

Naevys apologized to me, in front of everyone.

- "We should not have tested you." he said. "I did not know what that would mean for you. But I ask you to understand: for my people, and for the elves, in particular, it is vitally important that we know who you are."

- "Who I am?"

- "Rhigen has told us what he saw. But I had to see it for myself. I am reasonably certain, now, that you may be the Varyan."

- "The Varyan?" said Sezima.

Enneiros and Alissara looked at each other. Yazgash was staring at me, her eyebrows raised. Gerdar Tanle's mouth was open.

- "In your language ... the Protector." said Naevys.

- "The Protector?" I repeated. "Protector ... of what?"

- "Ask your wife what the elven word for 'protected' is." said Naevys.

I turned to Saska. She flushed.

- "Beria?" she said, as if she was unsure of her answer.

- "No." said the fey. "That is a verb - to protect. That is also new elvish. There is a word in the elder tongue, which we taught the elves when they first came here."

When they first came here? How much older were the fey?

Naevys turned to Alissara.

- "You know the elder words."

- "I do." said the elf warden. "The word for 'protect' is Varya."

Then Alissara turned to me.

"And the word for 'protected', or 'safe' is ... Varna."

Gerdar Tanle let out her breath in a long, deep sigh. She spoke Elvish - she had married an elf - but this came as a surprise to her. Yazgash, too, was surprised, but she was nodding, as if it made perfect sense, like the answer to an old riddle.

Hurmas and Sezima stood there with their mouths open - I'm sure that I was doing the same. But the moment I heard it, it sounded right. I suddenly understood so much.

The first humans to come here hadn't given the place a new name; they'd simply adopted the old name used by its first inhabitants: the fey, and the elves. In all of the histories and chronicles of the Kings of Varna, no one had ever explained the origin of the name. Now I understood why.

And now I could also see why my father's scholars, and poet-assassins like Gedere hated the non-humans - because the early history of Varna was theirs. Humans could have shared in it, of course. The Kingdom, and now the Duchy, were significant. But that wasn't enough for those men: they wanted to own all of it - not just the land, but its history.

- "You ... you think that I might be the Varyan. Does that mean the Protector of elves and the fey?" I asked.

Naevys shook his head. "Varna is a place, Lord Tauma. The Varyan makes it safe for all: the fey, elves, humans, half-elves, orcs and half-orcs ..."

I was deeply moved by what he'd said. "That ... that is a wonderful idea, Lord Naevys."

- "I am no Lord." he said. "I am only ... the voice, if you will. The Speaker."

- "My apologies. There is so much that I didn't know about ... but may I ask: what makes you think that I might be the Varyan? Is it because of Tanarive?"

- "Glasha. The scholar. Tanarive. The arrow. Saska Tanle. They are part of it." said Naevys. "But you yourself seem unaware of what you've done, Lord Tauma. And what you could do."

- "I ... I don't understand."

Rhigen spoke up. "You trained in magic, in the Portoan School of the mind. But at Tanarive you stopped an arrow."

- "I only slowed it down."

Rhigen smiled. "Tell me, Lord Tauma, what School of magic allows one to move objects?"

- "Telekinesis." I said.

By all the Gods ... that was what Naevys had asked me to do - as a favour. Without thinking, I'd shaped the aether into a spatula, and then a fishing-net. I should not have been able to do that. It was a school of magic I'd never studied. And yet ... I'd practiced it, because Rhigen had trained me to think in unorthodox ways. He'd even told me that fey children couldn't do what he'd asked me to try.

- "And to restore physical stamina?" asked Rhigen. "What school is that?"

After the assassination attempt, when I was too exhausted to speak, Glasha had urged me to take in a little aether, to sharpen my thinking, because they needed me ...

My mouth dropped again. That was Body. I'd done Mind magic, Telekinesis, and Body Magic. Then there was the way I'd killed the second assassin in the baths. Durgulel had drilled it into us - study one school of magic, and only one. Two is the absolute limit.

Anyone who attempts 3 or more schools of magic inevitably goes mad.

I didn't feel mad - but I was certainly confused.

- "I ... may I have a moment?" I asked.

Naevys inclined his head.

I invited three people to follow me: my lover, my wife, and my sister. We went into Saska's bedchamber, where I'd spent most of the past few days with her.

The moment we closed the door behind us, Sanatha turned on Glasha.

- "How could you?" she snapped. "You pushed him to use Body magic!"

- "We needed Tauma. We would never have gotten out of Elmina without him."

- "So you encouraged him to attempt body magic - knowing that you were risking his sanity?"

- "What?" said Saska.

- "That's not what I was doing." said Glasha.

- "What were you thinking? Damn it, Glasha!"

- "I told you: we needed Tauma. Otherwise, we'd never have gotten out of Elmina, that night. You'd have been married off to Tir Peneda, Sanatha. But I would have been raped, before being killed. Yazgash and Enneiros would probably be dead, but Tauma would most certainly be dead, and I couldn't face that."

- "But the risk! You were risking his sanity!"

- "Only according to Durgulel." said Glasha. "My father told me that the fey don't have schools of magic. They practice restraint, and moderation, but in extreme circumstances ..."

I needed to calm down. I drew on a little aether, to help me. I had to explain magic to Saska, more fully, and I had to tell both her and Sanatha about my training sessions with Rhigen and Glasha.

That was when I remembered something Glasha had said to me, that wild night: "Tauma, we need you. Can you draw on the aether? Just a little bit? Trust me - this is what you have to do."

Trust me. Why would she have said that, unless she already knew that it could be done.

- "You've done it. That's how you knew. Glasha ... how many schools have you tried?"

She wouldn't lie to me. "Four." she said.

Glasha wasn't mad. Then again, she was half-fey, part half-orc, and only one eighth human - if that.

- "You should have told him." said Saska.

- "I know." said Glasha. "But he might have said no, and ... and we'd be dead."

- "Which four, Glasha?" I said. "What have you done?"

Her eyes were rimmed with tears, and she could hardly look at Saska or Sanatha. Glasha could just - barely - meet my eye.

- "Time." she said. "Body. And Spirit - so that I could speak to my father as a fey, and try their magic. I wanted ... to understand him."

- "And the fourth?"

- "Divination." she said, very softly.

- "Prophecy? You tried to predict the future? Glasha - why?"

- "I wanted to see ... I needed to know if we would still be together ..."

- "Oh, Glasha." said Saska.

- "It was ... a moment of weakness. I won't do it again."

I was watching very closely as she said this. She was overwrought, extremely emotional - but not mad. And I was still angry, but not out of control. Then another thought occurred me, and my rage immediately began to recede.

This was Glasha. I knew, down to my very core, that she would never willingly hurt me, or expose me to danger.

- "You didn't know, did you? That your father and Naevys would test me."

- "No. Rhigen never told me about Naevys, or ... the Varyan. He only encouraged me to keep training you. That night in Elmina, I wasn't trying to push you into a new school - I just wanted you to be awake, so that we could escape."

I heard the truth in what she was saying. She looked back at me through a veil of tears. I'd never seen her looking so vulnerable. Even at age 5, she'd seemed indomitable.

- "I understand." I said. "You weren't pushing me into taking a risk. But you've been risking yourself. You have to stop, Glasha. I can't afford to lose you."

- "Nor I." said Saska. "Not so soon after finding you."

- "I ... I wanted to help." said Glasha. "I'm no fighter. I can't bring you any support. Magic is all I have to offer."

- "Your magic is a wonderful bonus - but it's not you, Glasha. If I have to choose between your magic and you, you know very well what I'll say."

- "Please tell us you'll be more careful." said Saska.

- "It's time to tell you about magic." I said, to my wife. "And there's more that you need to know." I said, to my sister.

***

I wasn't prepared to accept the mantle of Varyan - which was fine, because Naevys wasn't quite ready to bestow it on me yet.

But I wasn't ready to talk any more with him. He was fey, and they sometimes frightened me. They were searching for their Varyan, and they didn't seem too concerned about the cost - the human cost - of finding him. I was reasonably certain that if I failed to meet their criteria, they'd have no qualms about shedding me as quickly as a bad memory.

It was understandable, though. I could see their side of it. The fey probably hadn't had many positive encounters with humans. We had taken much of their land, cut down trees, and pushed them deeper into the forest.

Also, I had to remember the source of much of what I thought I knew about the fey: humans. Humans like my father and his friends. Tales to frighten children, warnings about the dangers in the deep woods, and the wily fey.

Glasha hadn't known her father's people. Though half-fey herself, she couldn't tell me much about them. Rhigen had helped me develop my skills with magic. Did he have his own reasons for teaching me? No doubt. But his purpose might not necessarily conflict with mine.

I had a lot more thinking to do about this.

Rhigen came to speak to me, though, the very next day. I gave him a hearing for his daughter's sake.

- "You were not in danger." he said. "I would no more risk your sanity than I would my daughter's."

- "Is that so?"

- "I understand that you are skeptical. But your Portoan tutor was only partly right. Learning from different schools of magic is not the danger; it's attempting to master multiple schools which can lead to insanity - most often by way of megalomania."

I remembered what Durgulel had said; he'd failed to make that distinction.

"We approach magic more naturally, as you well know." continued Rhigen. "For us, the lines between the Topaz Order's Schools are arbitrary divisions. But we agree with them that too much magic can be dangerous. That was one reason why I agreed to teach you."

- "To make sure that I didn't hurt myself?"

- "Partly. Yes. You must realize it by now: you can gather the aether more quickly - and in greater quantity - than almost anyone that I know. There will always be danger for you, if you overreach yourself."

- "Yet you and Naevys tested me." I said it, and instantly regretted it. I heard myself sounding like what my Father had accused me of being: sullen.

- "If you had been incapable of lifting the stone, but had persevered, and over-extended yourself, you would have suffered a nasty headache - a clear warning not to attempt it again. But you did it easily. It was not the power you expended, Tauma, that was impressive. It was the fact that you could do it at all, so quickly, without training or practice."

- "What are you trying to tell me, Rhigen?"

- "I am warning you to not push too far, too fast. You do not need to discover your limits all at once. Small, incremental increases will serve you best. If you rush to the boundaries ..."

- "I could fall off a cliff."

- "Exactly. You have others to think of, now."

The fey stayed in Souglad, while I met with my supporters and allies. Gerdar Tanle was delighted when Gerdar Azren came to join us, with 20 men. It wasn't the number of fighters he brought that mattered most; it was more the fact that he didn't consider our cause hopeless.

I spent my time with the various contingents and their leaders, getting to know them, and trying to gauge whether they were here simply as a show of support, or if they were prepared to take a stand.

We had Yazgash's 35 orcs. Enneiros' 25 elves. Hurmas and Sezima, with their 30 riders. Gerdar Tanle and Azren had 70 between them, half of them mounted. Alissara was the key figure for us, but with the way the elves came and went, we couldn't be sure from day to day if we had 100, or 200. Even at our best projection, we would have less than 400 fighters.