Draken fell silent, absorbing this. He snuck a glance at Tyrolean, who listened with rapt attention.
“There are issues, of course,” Osias continued. “There will be a reason why the spirit remains accessible to life. He—I say he because it’s best to absorb a spirit of like gender—might want something in return for your use of his skill. You will often feel his presence, even when you don’t wish it so.” Here the Mance glanced at Tyrolean and Draken knew he was trying to think how to word the last without incriminating Draken worse than he already had. “The dead are tied to their homeland. Ma’Vanni will not allow them to pass over her seas to seek another land.”
Draken’s shock and anger betrayed him before he could think how to communicate while protecting his secrets from Tyrolean. “So I can’t go back if I do this?”
“I think not, my friend. And it is irreversible. Only death will free you from the binding to this spirit.”
In a fit of agitation, Draken rose and stalked the short circle of light made by the fire. “I said I’d go if I could,” Draken said. “You’re talking about never going back. I’d like to keep the option open, at least.”
“Go back where?” Tyrolean asked, unable to withhold his curiosity any longer.
No one answered.
Tyrolean rose. “I am First Captain of the Akrasian Royal Escort. You are compelled to answer me.”
Draken turned on him and lifted the pendant off his chest. “I outrank even you, I think.”
“I believe we can trust Captain Tyrolean,” Osias said quietly. “And I need his vow of concealment. This is an ancient, private ritual, never witnessed by mortals.”
“Except for those you do it to,” Draken snapped.
“All the Mance have been through the ritual, my friend,” Osias said.
“You mean to say you’ve got one of these spirits inside you?”
Osias nodded. “Many, actually. Where do you think we get our power from?”
“I don’t know. The gods?”
Osias gave him one of his enigmatic smiles. “Do you believe your power is gods-given, Night Lord?”
The point Osias was trying to make by using his title wasn’t lost on Draken. You lie long enough, and your lies start to take on a measure of truth, Draken thought. Maybe that was power enough.
He crouched across the fire from the Mance. “You don’t believe I’m ever going back, do you?”
“Will your people ever trust you as wholly as we do? Or will they trust you only as far as you trust me?”
Draken scrubbed at his face with his hand. The moonlight had darkened with cloud cover. He pulled his cloak hood up to shield his eyes from the spitting rain. “You’re throwing that back in my face?”
“No. I simply fear, even should you pursue all you seek,” Osias’ words came slow, selected with great care, “you would not live so long to see it.”
He wouldn’t live so long...because he couldn’t fight as he must. The truth left him numb. Specialization had made the Monoean army what it was today: unbeatable. But as a single soldier, as a leader, whether of an army or a small company like this, he was found lacking. Draken tipped his head back to stare up at the sky. A moonbeam cut through the clouds and foliage overhead and lit the raindrops like tiny gems. He watched as a half-moon filled the gap between the trees, another close behind.
Draken had accepted there was power in this place he could never hope to fathom: tiny folk called Moonlings, Mance glamour, the Akrasians employing a black void as a city wall. He’d accepted Setia’s warm, forest-dappled skin and that Osias could magic danger away. He had even exchanged his loyalty for the affections of a foreign Queen.
But the similarities to home had freed him to believe in the implausible: the inflexible demand of a superior, politics, and friendship—these were familiar. Even with Tyrolean staring him down half the time, he found a measure of comfort in his military bearing. Sevenmoon, there were even enemies here, and Draken was on the chase again. Dwelling on familiar work had displaced some of his homesickness, given him purpose and direction.
No, he thought. A go at Lesle’s killer. That’s what this is about.
But when he glanced at Osias, who watched from across the fire, some of his resolve for revenge melted away.
Setia shifted closer so her knee leaned against Draken’s thigh, and she stared unmoving into the fire. Osias sat in his shadows, silent with eternal patience, and Tyrolean’s attention rested on Draken, awaiting his answer.
“I come from Monoea,” Draken said to him. “It’s all you need to know.”
Tyrolean narrowed his lined eyes. “You look fair Brînian.”
“Brînian blood runs in my veins.”
“Are you here to harm Akrasia?”
Draken grunted. “No. Apparently I’m meant to protect it. And if you breathe a word of any of this, I’ll kill you.”
Tyrolean didn’t flinch at Draken’s harsh tone. “I’ll hold your secrets, then, Night Lord. Not because of the threat, but because you are my superior and it is honorable to do so.”
***
By the time Draken stretched out on the ground for the ritual he shivered under a pelting rain. He had to strip his armor and clothes, to “accustom yourself to vulnerability,” as Osias put it. Mud stuck to his back and chilled him through. He didn’t know whether his shivering was more from cold or bald-faced fear, and he soon gave up caring. Now he had signed on for the joining, he just wanted it over.
“Keep your hands on him,” Osias advised Tyrolean and Setia. “He’ll need the constancy of life.”
They nodded and placed their flat palms on Draken’s chest and ribs.
“Surely you’ve friends with whom you create an instant bond despite outward differences,” Osias said. His grave expression unfamiliar, he had become a solemn stranger.
Draken, lying nude in the cold mud, was more concerned with a root under his shoulder, which pressed itself deeper into the muscle every moment.
“I’m rather a loner,” he said. “I really want to have this done, Osias.”
“In good time. But you need to know he will touch you to determine whether the partnership will work. It can be disconcerting.”
“All right,” Draken said. “I’m freezing here.”
“I’m afraid you do not yet know the meaning of cold, my friend.” Osias smiled, his last for a long while, as his hands worked signs and symbols in the air over Draken’s body. Draken wondered if he imagined the silvery trail of sparkling rain from the Mance’s fingers.
Osias unflinchingly cut his own palm with a bone knife. He dripped black blood on Draken’s forehead, chin, throat, heart and stomach. It burned his skin and then the sting faded, like wax dripped from a candle. Osias lapsed into his own language, his tongue caressing foreign words into song.
Draken didn’t quite know how he realized when the spirits joined their small party. He was still cold and damp; the root was still digging into his shoulder-blade; the air didn’t go still. Osias’ countenance did not waver. No voices joined his as he droned on in the strange, melodious Mance-chant, his necromantic Voice filling the wood with vivid resonance. The others did not move as they knelt on the ground next to Draken, their palms on his chest and Osias’ blood marking the only warm spots on his body.
Their eyes met, Tyrolean’s and Setia’s. Draken sensed it right as they did. He resisted the urge to speak. Osias had warned them any words but the hypnotic necromancy song would frighten the spirits off.
Draken listened instead to Osias’ call, and he felt himself swept away with it, accepting the urge to pull from his body and ride the winds, to await the Mance’s bidding. The thin glow of the moons shone down, and Draken wanted to follow the light to its end. He was no longer with Tyrolean and Setia; they had remained behind in the warm place where love and hope and life resided. Tied there only by the tether of the Mance’s voice, he felt no real longing to go back. He drifted in a black void, between the moons and Osias. It was comforting there, in the blackness. All hopes and fears and wants faded away. He just
was
. Peaceful. Isolated.
Osias’ blood on his skin yawned with indistinct sensation, leaving misshapen black holes in him, and he separated further: ethereal and corporeal bound only by the thin thread of memory. It came to him that those holes must cause pain. But as he watched from high above, he saw no reaction from the man lying there. He tried to remember why he was watching. He tried to remember why he cared. The distance grew. Even the memory of what pain was faded into the moonlight. He couldn’t muster much compassion for the person on the ground. The pale, long-haired creature stood over him, arms spread, inviting the pain. Draken saw others, or the suggestion of them, but he couldn’t be sure what they were and why they didn’t quite look the same as Setia and Tyrolean.
Funny how he could recall their names. They are friends, he decided after a time.
It might have been nights or breaths before the silver man knelt next to Draken, smiled down into his eyes and touched his face with a loving hand. Cold and pain and reason slammed back into his body and he shivered violently. Tyrolean’s face creased with apprehension, but his hands were as steady as a stone fence.
“You’re back now,” the silver man said. “It took some doing. You must stay with me now, Draken. Will you do it?”
Draken nodded up at the beautiful god, hovering with his benign smile and his tender touch. Why would he not want to stay?
“It’s an exchange of gifts,” the silver man whispered. “Life for life. You will allow him some life again, and in turn he shall protect you.”
Draken nodded and swallowed, tried to find his voice. It sounded sandy, as if he hadn’t used it in a long while. Osias. That was his name. “Aye, Osias.”
“His name is Bruche. He is noble-born and honorable. Once you merge you shall know his secrets, and he shall know yours. Nothing shall be hidden between you.”
Draken nodded his assent. He couldn’t work up any fear; if Osias said it was necessary and right, then it was.
Osias smoothed back Draken’s hair and then placed unyielding hands on either side of his head. “Bruche?” he said softly, glancing past their companions.
A tremor breathed across Draken’s bare chest, and the roots of his hair shifted in alarm. Before he’d been detached from any pain, but ice swept over his head and down across his brow and cheeks before sinking into his soul. Every part of Draken prickled with cold invasion; Bruche sniffed here and there, occupying feelings and memories and every thought Draken had ever had. His mind froze with the caress of insubstantial fingers.
“Breathe, Draken,” Osias whispered.
Draken desperately wanted to move, but a blanket of ethereal imprisonment snaked across him, cloaking his skin like burial bindings. He gulped air in a panic. The spirit Bruche had been waiting, because Draken drowned in a sea of unfamiliar memories. His mouth opened in a silent scream, and just beyond the roar of power filling his body Draken could still hear Osias’ Voice, aiding Bruche in finding his place in his new home. The cold receded, Draken was able to draw another small bit of air into his aching lungs, and Osias released him, leaving behind a thousand recollections: games and swords and women and friends and honor and duty and death, none of which he’d ever known and more than he could possibly ever sort through.
Bruche’s voice, deep and filled with laughter, filled his mind.
You’ll suit, friend
.
Chapter Thirteen
I
’ll be still so you can rest
, Bruche said, as Draken dried off as best he could and dressed. Draken didn’t know how to respond, so he didn’t.
“Sleep by me, Draken,” Osias said. After a short meal, he wrapped himself in his cloak and fell into a motionless slumber. As bidden, Draken lay close enough they were touching, back to back. He, too, felt the need for comfort. He pointedly ignored Tyrolean’s disapproving gaze the next morning when he woke with his arm slung over the sleeping Mance.
They started again at daybreak. The spaces between the trees widened, the trunks thickened, and the forest aged as their horses walked. Great branches hung low with lush fruits and thick, waxy leaves, and they found shrubs with chubby pink berries to supplement their meager midday meal of cured meat and crusty bread.
Bruche was Brînian, and he’d been a bodyguard of the old Brînian King during the Sword War. The position had afforded him wealth and women, but he’d remained unmarried and dedicated to the defense of his sovereign. He finally had died in defense of the Brînian King, the current Prince’s father, when the Akrasians stormed the Brînian Royal Citadel and murdered everyone on the premises.
He’d studied their sword at length and without his saying anything, Draken realized he’d died by its edge, wielded by Elena’s father as a war prize. He saw the memory of the blade swinging his way, the phantom of pain and then a blackness. Ma’Vanni’s realm, and death, was closed to them both now.
How will you bear to work for the Akrasians now?
Draken asked, glancing pointedly at Tyrolean.
When Elena’s father murdered you and your King.
I breathe again, through you, and my life is bound with yours. If you answer to Queen Elena then I must be well with it.
Sensing his discomfort, Bruche added,
I will protect you. The gods would not allow me to come to you unless you were worthy in purpose and deed.
Draken didn’t know why the gods would care about him, but he asked,
Why did you come back here?
I am an unfinished soul, and I have no real place in Eidola or with Ma’Vanni. My whole life was spent protecting my King. I could not protect him, but perhaps by protecting you I can achieve peace with my goddess.
They fell into an uneasy silence, Draken lost in the unfamiliar imagery of another man’s life.
Deep in the next night, swaying in their saddles from exhaustion, they stopped to rest in an ancient stand of giant Ocscher Trees. Draken barely noticed his surroundings as he stumbled to find a place to sleep by the fire. Again, no one asked him to take a watch, and he woke with Setia curled around him, and Tyrolean sleeping near, one arm flung over his eyes. Osias stood guard, arrow on the string, staring into the trees.