The Young Dread (3 page)

When she finally neared the cottages of the Dreads, Maud heard the clash of whipswords again—but this was nothing like the childish fights of the apprentices. This was the rapid, ferocious strike and counterstrike of a Dread doing battle.

And there were voices:

“…and how have you been occupying yourself in the years since last I saw you?” asked the first voice.

“Only in good deeds, of course,” said the second.

The Young Dread shifted gears and took off through the trees, a strange emotion coming over her. She knew who was fighting: one combatant was the Middle Dread, and the other was…

…the Old Dread.

The first voice was his. Her master was awake. After years sleeping
There,
he'd come back to them.

“Good deeds were not how you occupied yourself the last time we met,” the Old Dread said.

His voice was like a chant, rhythmic, almost singsong, just as they all sounded when they'd woken from a long stay
There.

Another clash of swords, and then another, but this wasn't a real fight; the two Dreads were at practice.

“One may change,” the Middle said.

“One may,” replied the Old.

Maud could see them now. She ducked behind a tree before they noticed her, then stealthily climbed up among its branches to watch.

Her master must have woken sometime in the night and returned to the world. His return had been planned, of course. That was why the Middle Dread had sent her off alone; he wasn't ready to teach her the specifics of their master's retrieval.

The Old and the Middle were circling each other—the Middle younger and larger, the Old shorter and slighter—each with his whipsword at the ready. The blade of the Middle's sword slithered about itself, shifting from a broadsword to a scimitar to a longsword. The constant motion was, the Young Dread thought, a sign of nervousness. The Old Dread's whipsword was perfectly still. And yet his motions hadn't returned to normal; he advanced in strange jerks, slow, then fast, then slow again.

The Middle struck with the swiftness only Dreads could achieve, through years of training and also because they saw time differently. The Old Dread responded with a blinding parry. He caught the Middle off balance, sent him stumbling back.

“Where is my Young Dread?” the Old asked.

“Nearby, I am sure,” the Middle replied, a flicker of anger crossing his features.

His sword again went through a dozen shapes. If he meant it as a distraction for the Old, it was not working. The Middle leapt forward, almost a blur, even to Maud's eyes. The Old met him halfway, threw him forward onto the ground.

“You've gotten slow in my absence,” the Old Dread said, his movements alternating between sluggish and fast, still not under his full control.

The Middle wiped dirt from his mouth. Maud watched him visibly focusing his mind, in the way they all practiced.

“Perhaps I've gotten a little slow,” he admitted, getting back to his feet. “I have only the Young Dread to practice with.”

“So you have kept yourself well apart from others?” the older Dread asked, his words in an even stream.

“Well apart, aye.”

“There will be no unpleasant surprises for me to discover?”

“I am never quite sure what you will find unpleasant,” the Middle replied.

And then he pounced, his weapon like a smudge of black in the air. Their whipswords clashed, far too quickly for the eye to follow. The Young Dread thought she was fast, far faster than any Seeker, but she was not this fast.

The whirlwind ended with both men at a complete standstill, their blades against each other, each man holding the tip of his own sword as he pushed against the other weapon. The whipswords melted harmlessly around the flesh of their owners, so it looked almost as if each man's hand had grown into his sword, as if they'd become one composite being of man and blade.

“You have been a true Dread?” the Old asked.

“Ye have my word, as I gave it to you before,” the Middle replied.

“And my Young Dread?” the Old asked. “I will find she is the same as I left her?”

“You will find her better. I have continued her instruction well.”

Both men's faces were turning red from the force of their locked stance.

Then the Middle Dread's leg shot out, hooked the older man's ankle, and sent him down onto his back, with such force that the sound of it echoed in the clearing. The Middle Dread was instantly above him. He tossed away his whipsword and struck, four tremendous punches in quick succession. But he hadn't hit the Old Dread at all. He'd landed each blow into the ground, to the left and right of the Old Dread's head, in a perfect display of physical control.

The two men stared at each other.

“I've always wondered,” the Middle said, “what would happen if you died, old man.”

The Young Dread's breath caught in her throat when she heard that insolence.
Old man?

The Old Dread responded, unperturbed, “Perhaps not so old as you think. Or perhaps much older. But…if I were to die, then I would die. Simple.”

“And yet…what else would die with you? Only this?” The Middle slapped the back of his hand against the Old's shoulder to indicate his body as a whole. “Or would more go if you went?”

The Old Dread smiled up at the larger man. “Ah,” the Old said, “that is certainly the question.”

With a speed Maud had not yet seen, her master struck the Middle, twisted himself out from beneath, and was on his feet in a motion so graceful and sinuous that he looked to Maud like a column of dark smoke rising from a fire. In an instant, the roles were reversed, with the Middle Dread on the ground and the Old Dread over him.

“I could take your medallion from you, and so take from you the ability to wake yourself,” the Old Dread told him. The words came smoothly, steadily, and yet there was no mistaking their particular weight.

“Yes, you could take away my medallion, old man. You could take away everything.” The Middle's voice was serious and respectful as he said, “I acknowledge that. And you will get only the truth from me.”

The Old Dread softened, and the Young Dread thought he looked almost fatherly toward the Middle, much as he often looked toward her. He offered his hand. After a moment's hesitation, the Middle took it, and the Old Dread pulled him up.

“You gave me quite a fight,” he said softly.

“And you,” the Middle said politely.

Then the Old Dread turned to the tree in which Maud was hiding.

“Come down now, child!” he commanded. “I have come to see you.”

“It's been a long time since I saw you move so quickly, Master,” the Young Dread said.

She and the Old Dread were walking through the shaded woods, without the Middle.

“That it has,” he agreed.

He'd fully entered the time stream of the world by now. His gait was smooth and fluid, his tread silent.

“How long has it been since we last saw each other, child?”

“Nearly a hundred years, I think,” she answered. “Though I have only been awake a few times since. Have you woken in between?”

“Once,” he told her. The word carried the burden of some unpleasant memory.

Her master was not a tall man. The Young Dread reached the height of his nose, and so she was quite familiar with his long gray beard. It twitched now, thoughtfully.

“I was awake once, and you were not,” he said eventually. “I saw the Middle Dread, and we had…words.” He tugged at the end of his beard in a meditative fashion. “They were angry words. But also good words, words of promise and change. Has he kept his promises, I wonder?”

She looked up and found his gaze intently upon her. The Old Dread's eyes had always been her favorite part of him. They were graymore than brown, and they shone with unexpected brightness. When he looked at her, she thought, her master saw to her heart, and this made her heart feel larger.

“Kept his promise how, Master?”

He wore his old gray cloak, the same cloak he'd worn every day that she'd known him, with many deep pockets that carried all manner of objects and weapons and scraps of parchment. Maud could only guess at the contents of her master's cloak and also at its weight. And yet he wore it as though it weighed nothing at all.

His hands bothwithdrew inside that cloak, then reappeared with several knives in each. If the Young Dread's eyes had been slower, it would have looked as though the knives appeared all on their own.

“I wonder—has he been training you well?” he asked her.

“I—”

Before she had a chance to answer, he threw one of the knives at her, so quickly it was only a ghostly glint across her view.

The Young Dread slowed her sense of time, snatched the knife's handle from the air. She let her body spin like a dancer, and then she sent the blade whistling away.

He threw a second knife immediately. She repeated the motion, faster. And then another knife, which she plucked from the air and flung as hard as she could.

Her master looked appreciatively at a tree fifty feet away, where the three knives had planted themselves up to their hilts, each no more than half an inch from the others.

“Ah, nicely done—” he began.

He let fly two knives midsentence, the first one aimed, straight and deadly, at her heart, and the second at the tree.

The Young Dread understood. She caught the first just in front of her chest, its point grazing her shirt, and then she hurled it, focusing every muscle of her body on the throw, releasing it like a bolt of silver lightning.

The two knives hit the tree in quick succession. The first, the Old Dread's knife, pierced the bark in perfect alignment with the others. The second, Maud's blade, embedded itself into the handle of her master's knife and stood out from the tree, quivering with the force of both throws.

The Old Dread smiled. He had taught her to throw knives beginning at age seven, but she'd been practicing the skill on her own for a long time. She was very pleased to impress him.

“Bring them back!” he said, the words coming so quickly they blended into one long sound.

Maud created the dual time sense the Dreads trained themselves to use—slowing her experience of time while forcing her body into fast motion. She sprinted to the tree, retrieved five knives, and returned to him, all in the space of two breaths.

She offered him the blades, and he took them, one by one, nodding his head at each.

“The Middle Dread has done his duty well by you,” he told her. “You're faster than when I left you.”

“Thank you, Master. We've trained with the helm also.”

The Old Dread examined the handle of the knife that had been pierced by Maud's last blade. He clucked, as if to point out that he would need to repair it now. Then he tucked all the weapons back into his cloak, with a motion as quick and graceful as any magician's.

“The helm,” he said. “Child, there are limits to its value. Though I imagine it's safer on you than most.”

“We use it infrequently.”

“He is a good teacher, then.” He must have noticed something in the Young Dread's eyes, because he asked, “You have something to tell me about him?”

She looked back over her shoulder. They were at least a mile away from the cottages, surely too far for the Middle Dread to hear them clearly, even if he threw his hearing to its limits.

She thought of her life with the Middle—cold solitude, harsh words, vicious training. But the Old Dread knew this already.

She told him only, “He is a good teacher, but he does not much care for me.”

“Mmm. You may be right,” he said at length. “Bear in mind, though, child, that he does not much care for anyone.”

At this, Maud felt herself smile. “I believe you're right.”

They began walking again, through the shadow and sunlight of the forest floor at noon.

“There is value to him,” the Old Dread said. “We Dreads must stand apart from humanity, so our heads are clear to judge.” He tapped his temple in a familiar gesture. He'd said these very words to her on the first day they met, with the same tap upon his head. “The Middle stands apart very well.”

The Young Dread thought this over and decided her master might be right. The Middle Dread was a brutal, even malicious, instructor, and yet…he'd made her better. He was an aspect of her life that she must tolerate. Seeing her master from time to time gave her the strength to do so.

Enough. She would think of the Middle Dread no more on this morning.

She asked, “How is it you can move so quickly? The last time I saw you, you walked as though asleep.”

“The longer I rest
There,
the more I regain my youthful vigor. When I've just woken up, it's the strongest. But it won't last.”

“You will slow down again?”

“Yes. Perhaps rather quickly. We shall see.”

His gaze had retreated, as though he were looking at a landscape within his own mind. She wondered what he saw in there. Did he look at the past? Or was it the future? If he was able to see ahead, would he ever tell her what he saw? Maud wondered how long her own life would be, and how strange. Did he know?

In time, his eyes came back to the woods and the sunlight. He said, “What else have you learned, child?”

“I can stretch time when I must, and make my heart and my lungs and my muscles follow.”

“I've seen you do that. But what else? Has he taken you with him to administer the Seeker oaths to apprentices?”

The Young Dread shook her head. “I've observed an oath ceremony from afar, but I have not taken part.”

“Ah. You shall take part now. You and the Middle Dread and I will together administer the oaths this year. You will learn to properly judge a Seeker apprentice and deem him worthy of becoming a Seeker. I will show you that, and I will teach you all that remains to take your place truly as the Young Dread.”

“Will you teach me all you know, Master?”

She eyed the many bulging pockets of his cloak, and thought of the mysteries contained in them.

His face was solemn, but his eyes were friendly as he answered. “Perhaps not all. Not yet. But I will teach you what you must know until the next time we meet.” He squeezed her shoulder.

It was enough. The Young Dread, who was perhaps thirteen years old, though she'd been alive for nearly three hundred years, who was once a girl called Maud, was satisfied. For the moment, she was not alone. Her old master was with her, and in his presence, she felt content. He would teach her what she must know, he would make her a better fighter, and she would learn other things in his presence besides—kindness, fairness, justice.

Perhaps he would slow down again soon, become the old and tired man she'd seen at the end of his last waking. But for now, he was his true self, the man who'd taken her from her home when she was seven years old, and promised to teach her about the hum of the universe.

He was still keeping that promise. The Young Dread, for a short while, at least, would allow herself to be happy.