Chapter Twenty-Two

 

 

Leaving Av sleeping, Jer looked at his father, then at the bottle in his father’s hand. Ervam looked at the bottle as well, sniffing at the opening before he made a face. Over half empty, it held an amber-coloured liquid.

“What is in that?” Jer asked.

“Brandy of some kind,” Ervam said, setting the bottle on the table. “You’ve seen him drunk more often than me, so how much do you think he’ll recall?”

“I think the last two hours are gone. He won’t recall threatening our lives for endangering the life of the one who sits the throne. Or when he started talking in another language. I wasn’t aware Av learned another language.”

Av did know another language, but that language sounded nothing like what he had been speaking, and none of them had spoken it since Mirmae had passed away. None of them could bring themselves to do it.

“As far as I know, he doesn’t,” Ervam said quietly. “Your brother’s not a moron, but he’s definitely not bright enough to pick up on a language without one of us knowing he was learning, if you get my meaning.”

Meaning the only way Av would have learned another language was if Ervam or Jer sat him down and taught him themselves.

“Know the language he was speaking?” Jer asked.

“No. Could be ancient,” Ervam said. Jer opened his mouth to ask if anyone knew how to speak ancient when his father added, “There are hundreds of dialects of ancient. Also, given the tone of the language used, I’d rather not get it translated and take it for what it was. A threat.”

“It could have been a recipe for some spicy soup,” Jer said.

“I’m pretty certain all languages have the same tones to them,” Ervam said with a grumble.

Both sat at the kitchen table and contemplated the bottle that Ervam set between the two of them.

Av had talked for hours. Jer knew that Av wouldn’t recall most of the conversation, and that was how they wanted to keep it. No need to be bringing up that sort of information when Av was stuck on palace lands until spring.

The roads might let him through, though the snow would eventually lock him into one village or another for the remainder of the winter. There was no way to mobilize men.

Winter simply was not the time of travel.

“I can’t believe we didn’t tell her,” Ervam said finally.

“I’m sure we did,” Jer responded. “There’s absolutely no way that we neglected to mention to Aren what her bodily condition was. Surely Av did at some point.”

“Perhaps he made mention of her being changed by the cave, but did not tell her what the infection would entail,” Ervam said, rubbing a hand on his face.

“I will write to Telm in the morning and we will put this to rest. Aren’s grasp on what’s happened to her has to be made clear, if it’s cloudy at all.”

“Absolutely. Can you imagine a queen infected, walking about in public without knowledge of why she did what she did?” Ervam asked. “It would be madness.”

“Aren knows more about sex than she does about queen’s stone,” Jer growled. “She wasn’t here for the conversation. Is now a good time to start drinking?”

“No, her not knowing about the stone does absolutely nothing. She can’t infect others, she can’t change the magic capabilities of others. I think…” Ervam trailed off, frowning at the bottle of brandy. “The only real difference is that her magic is stronger. Something that could help her greatly in the situation she’s in now. And she’ll get herself into more trouble… and go mad eventually.”

“Like the trouble she’s in now?”

The trainer growled. Jer watched his father stand and snatch up the bottle of alcohol. Ervam marched to the alcohol cupboard, placing the brandy back with a loud thump. Jer couldn’t hide his smile as Ervam marched back to the table and sat down.

“Back to the original question,” Ervam said. “What are we to do about Av?”

Jer shrugged. “We go with whatever. Know of a rank who’s available to court a healer? Might as well start vetting now.”

“No, none of them are too pleasant, but Er is planning on sending a few of the younger warriors on down to seek mates amongst those on palace lands. Wait until spring for that one,” Ervam said.

“Fair enough, how about we talk instead about the fact that you, sir, were supposed to be retired,” Jer said, sitting forward in his chair. “You registered as retired in the archives, which means that the only position you could take at court, or anywhere, is that of master, barring a better candidate.”

Ervam sighed. “I was bored. Besides which, there are absolutely no ranks in the area besides myself and the healer. If a raid started, the village would have been wiped out. All I did was to give them a few directions.”

“She’s now unsettled and capable of bashing a warrior’s face in,” Jer snarled.

“And?” Ervam asked. “Your brother wants commoners and ranks trained alike. Teaching a healer to keep her own against a warrior—the most likely person to be in a raiding party when upswings in strength of ranks are seen—was not a bad idea.”

“Which allows her to take down even the warriors who are trying to protect her,” Jer said.

“Not every woman needs a warrior to protect her, let alone wants one. I thought I raised you boys to see that, to understand that?” Ervam said.

“It’s not women that I have a problem training, it’s ranked women,” Jer countered. “They already have magic, and then you want to put a stick in their hands and show them how to gut a man? You’re as bad as Aren, wanting to know how to fight like a man. There is a balance to our world and that balance is men fight, women do magic. Magic is more frightening than fighting, so I don’t see why all women want to learn to fight.”

“Fighting is in our blood. Women have always learned to fight, usually alongside their man,” Ervam said.

“You would allow Aren to train to fight like a man?” Jer asked.

“Would you want to know how to use magic, if it might save your life?” Ervam said in response.

“A warrior doesn’t use magic, just like a woman doesn’t fight,” Jer said.

“Mie is a warrior and he has magic; what would you do about your brother, then?” Ervam said, raising his voice. “Slaughter him, claim the right to death because he’s obviously flawed in some way? Where does it stop? With the scribes? They’re all thin and weak, so why allow them to continue to breed? After they’re gone? Well, why not start killing off the weaker ranks because what did they do to deserve to live?”

“Mie does not attempt to flaunt his magic and that is not what we are talking about,” Jer said.

“No, we’re talking about my training a healer to defend herself with a stick instead of reaching for her magic, as she tried to do when I gave her the stick in the first place,” Ervam said.

“What do you mean, reached for her magic?” Jer asked.

“Jer. When you attack a healer who doesn’t know how to defend herself physically, she reaches for her magic the way a queen rages.” Ervam paused to see if Jer was actually listening to him. “By teaching her to attack with physical objects, I’ve kept her from killing her attacker. Do you know what happens if I reach a village and the attacker is dead because the healer melted his eyeballs and organs out his orifices?”

Jer’s stomach did a strange little flip. He didn’t want to know how his father knew what a healer’s magic could do to destroy a body.

He was afraid to ask what his father would do in response to such a situation.

“I suppose any man who came to save a woman and found the object of his rage already obliterated, would have a frustrated reaction,” Jer said.

“No,” Ervam said. “Rushing home to seduce your new lover after making many excuses and then finding her engaged with the neighbour, that’s frustrating.”

“I don’t understand, obviously,” Jer said.

“Of course not, though think about Mar being hurt and you run to save her. Except as you launched yourself at her attacker, he simply vanished,” Ervam said. “Think on that for a moment.”

Jer closed his eyes and placed himself in that position as best he could. Lacking other ranks available to interact with Av and Jer, their father had created thinking times. Ervam would construct scenarios, many of which he had lived through as a young rank in the north, and instruct his sons on how to set the scene. From there their instincts filled in the rest.

Jer and Av both had active imaginations. Pairing that with their maturing instincts, and many of the thinking times were as real to them as the actual thing. The exercises helped in later years when they encountered other ranks in similar situations.

In his mind, Jer set the scene as his father described and let it roll through the emotions. Sliding through the motions, Jer moved to step between Mar and her attacker. Anger boiled through him, frustration at the same time. He was frustrated that someone would want to attack Mar. They should have known that Mar was his, shouldn’t have needed him to step up to protect her. His reputation should have been enough.

Reaching out to capture the attacker, Jer stumbled forward, through him. There was nothing.

Not just nothing to attack.

There was an unsettling nothingness settling over Jer’s mind. He didn’t know what to do. Who could he turn his anger on, Mar? If he was taken by a rage, would he be able to see the difference between friend and foe? If Mar were still in a rage, there was a chance that Mar would attack Jer and in his confusion he would hurt her rather than stopping her.

He opened his eyes and stared at his father.

“I think I need that drink,” Jer managed to get out.

“Welcome to the fields,” Ervam said quietly, calmly. “Let me get you that drink.”

“Fields?” Jer asked, turning towards his father as the man seemed to trail slowly towards the cupboard.

He waited, irritable, as Ervam returned with the brandy bottle and poured a small glass with all the speed of a slug. Snatching the glass from Ervam, Jer downed what was in it and set it back on the table as gently as he could.

“Fields,” Ervam said, suddenly back to speed. “Did you notice that? How everything slowed down? Let me know when you start feeling again.”

“The western baron has control of the stone circle,” Jer said. “Which has four fields. He called them the fields.”

“I suppose that must be what the emotion was named after. Warriors said to take to the fields would go out and settle themselves. This is a dangerous state of mind, Jer.”

“Dangerous?” Jer asked, picking up his glass.

He considered how many ways he could kill a man with that glass. Looking past the glass, to his father, Jer realized just how dangerous the emotion was. Very carefully he set the glass back on the table.

“Like a queen’s rage,” Jer said quietly.

“A queen’s rage tends to end in less blood,” Ervam said.