8. M'dagka

      Laughter echoes through the hills as Tamsine’s Toil passes and shadows come out of their corners to cover the land. Night is safety for the bright-cloaked ones, and they dance through the hills like birds, their colors muted in the darkness. Reed pipes trill haunting melodies, but there is a joy in the sadness, a laughter in the melancholy, and the unsung words say We live, do we not? Come revel with us, embrace sorrow and know that while you feel, you yet live.

      But there is little life in the narrow valley where she crouches beneath an overhanging rock, her hands clenched at her sides as she deafens herself to the lure of her cousins’ songs. Another song is being sung here, in the rustle of the autumn leaves and the surreptitious sounds of creatures readying themselves for a harsh winter. And this song is one of death.

      She turns to look again at the old man. Sparse hair the color of stone lies thinly across his bruised scalp, and though night is nearly upon them, still he keeps his eyes slitted against the fading light. It burns, or so she has been told. Like acid on the eyes -- any light, even torchlight. Earlier she tried a small fire to cook the rabbit his dogs brought them, but he cried out so that she abandoned her task. He would not have eaten, in any case. And she could not eat while he lay dying before her.

      He tries to speak, and she leans her head closer, holding her breath. A single whisper of breath across his skin will bruise him further. The leaf that she was not quick enough to catch this morning tore a ragged slash in his cheek, and she had let it bleed rather than destroy his face by trying to bandage him.

      “Now,” he says. His breath is the chill, dank wind from an open grave, but she does not pull back. She has seen and smelled worse.

      She shakes her head, wishing he could open his eyes fully so she could see if any light remained within them. They had been like sapphires once, his eyes; others had made sport of the color and the fact that he was not of pure blood, but she had loved his eyes for their beauty and mirth. No matter, now, that his blood meant they could not marry. Other forces had separated them with far more permanence.

      “It is not time,” she says, and wonders how one’s heart can be a stone, and yet beat.

      “My heart will tear,” he says, so softly. And though she feels her own heart will tear, stone become parchment in an instant, she knows that his will in truth, if his throat does not tear first from the speaking. Her cousin passed that way, no longer able to bear the pain and so forcing one last scream through a throat fragile as butterfly wings. The cousin had drowned in her own blood.

      “It is not time,” she repeats, hating herself, loathing the words she speaks as they pass her lips. “There is yet light in the sky.”

      And he speaks again, and says what she has known he would, the words she has been dreading these past long hours.

      “Hold me.”

      “The light...” she says, turning her face to take a shallow breath.

      “The light be damned,” he says. “It’s time.”

      And she can not refuse him; has never been able to refuse him anything. And so she gathers him into her arms, slowly, so slowly, watching his face as if the power of her stare alone could restore him.

      It is over quickly. For one brief moment a sapphire flash in his eyes, a hint of a laughing youth, and then the feather-lightness of her touch crushes him, and his eyes turn red. His blood runs down her arms and stains her tunic, and the last of the day disappears, and in the distance she can hear the music of her cousins as they sing of joy, but for her there is no joy. Only hate. Hate as black as night, as death, for the one who caused the destruction of her love, who turned him into an old man in the span of a week, who made him die here on this barren slope before his thirtieth year.

      Against the rising moon, the shadow of a hawk looms large.

     M’dagka lifted her head and looked around sharply. She thought she had cried out in her sleep, but the library remained silent save for a few murmured voices several rows down. She was huddled in a large chair in the darkest corner of the room, the book she had been reading still lying face-up in her lap. There was still light to be seen through the heavy curtains over the windows. She had not slept long.

     Fragments of her dream flitted through her mind and she stood and stretched. The dream came less often now, but no less powerful for that. It was always different -- sometimes, she and Gek’ddr were in a quiet cave, sometimes in her own small tent at the edge of the encampment; once, they had even been out in the open, in front of the Tower itself. The death was always the same, though, that last look of love in his eyes always the same, mocking her as soon as she woke. Reproaching her.

     “I do what I must,” she said quietly, but the guilt remained. She had not seen Gek’ddr die. She had left before the curse took him fully, unable to bear watching him turn into a living corpse. She had a purpose, and Gek’ddr had understood, but in the rough moments after waking there was always the doubt. HAD it been necessary for her to leave when she did? Or had it been cowardice?

     She shrugged off the thoughts, passing a hand across her eyes quickly. They burned, but not from tears - she had never wept for Gek’ddr, or for any of them. Later there would be time to weep.

     The floor of the library was covered with thick carpet that muffled her footsteps as she returned the book she had been reading. The woman who took the book gave her an odd look -- M’dagka was used to such looks, though she’d thought she would stand out less in the melting pot that was The Crossing -- then smiled hastily as if fearing to offend. M’dagka didn’t bother responding, but turned on her heel and left.

     It was well past dark when she came to the tunnel. She had found the place the night before, but her natural caution had urged her to wait until she was fully ready, and she was glad she had. People had been about before, moving in the distance, but it was quiet this night save for the faint sputtering of the torch stuck into the wall. The tunnel was rough stone, slightly damp, and she held the edge of her cloak across her nose to mask the smell while she studied the outline of a door before her.

          Silly to feel fear, now. She’d been through worse than these people could possibly inflict upon her. In Ker’Leor, her cousins had hunted her like wild game, and only long years of training had enabled her to elude them. Even so, she’d had to find an empath in Theren to heal the marks left by a morah vine, after she’d stumbled into one like a green, city-bred fool.

     On the barge to Riverhaven, a Human with the well-fed sleekness of a Trader had made one obscene suggestion after another as his Tog guards stood laughing around her, cutting off any escape and preventing her from attacking the man as she would have otherwise. It had taken all her will to remain silent, merely gazing at the Trader with cold contempt, until he finally tired of the sport and moved on. She knew that if she’d fought back, he would not have limited himself to suggestions, but it had been a struggle just the same. She’d hacked off her hair in ‘Haven, and that coupled with the weight she’d lost since leaving home had been -- she thought -- enough to keep any man from showing an interest in her, but she couldn’t do much about her face unless she wanted to scar herself, and she still had too much pride for that.

     M’dagka smiled grimly. Let them look. Her hand caressed the sheath on her arm. She’d been practicing with the knives since she bought them back in Riverhaven, and she was no longer an easy target.

     She brought her attention back to the door. In the past three days, she’d heard enough rumours to fill half a dozen books, and she still was not sure what to expect. Some said those who could not give the right answer were killed. Some said even giving the right answer was not enough, that those of the Shadow Guild had further tests, and the penalty for failure in all cases was death. And some said the Guild itself did not even exist, in which case she might be one step away from making a colossal fool out of herself.

     But she’d been through worse. And she had no choice. She must learn to move like a shadow - more, to BECOME a shadow -- or she might as well die right here where she stood.

     She raised her hand and knocked.

     The street outside the Empath’s Guild was littered with debris -- half-crushed herbs, chests and trunks and other boxes, even a few pieces of torn and trampled clothing. A male Olvi sat leaning against a wall, facing the door that led into the Guild proper. He was holding a knife in one hand and a slim piece of iron in the other -- a lockpick, M’dagka saw as she drew closer. She smiled to herself. Two S’kra lounged nearby, listening to the Olvi as he lectured them on safety measures to use while disarming traps. At times he would lapse into silence, and only because she was watching him so keenly was M’dagka able to catch the subtle hand motions he made. It was not like the hand signs they used among her people while hunting, but neither was it totally dissimilar, and she had no doubt that she’d learn quickly when it came time for her to learn the secret language.

     Inside the Guild, chaos reigned. It was early enough in the morning that M’dagka had hoped for a relatively quick healing, but as she pushed past the mass of people crowding the main room, she picked up enough snippets of conversation to piece together that there had been some sort of invasion during the night. Death Spirits had apparently breached the walls, and there were so many wounded that she didn’t see how the Empaths would ever heal them all. One Elven man, his head wrapped in blood-soaked bandages, complained loudly that the invasion had been over too quickly and he hadn’t seen enough action. M’dagka shook her head. The stories were more accurate than she’d dreamed -- truly, the people of this place WERE half-mad.

     She was nearly knocked over by two women dragging a mangled corpse toward the door. The corpse kept up a running stream of chatter in the strange, atonal voice of the dead, and M’dagka shuddered. They took death too lightly, these people. They didn’t realize how easily the protection of their favors could be stripped from them. She doubted the air of gaiety in the room would last long if the Clerics’ resurrections stopped working.

     Slowly, she worked her way through the throng until she found space to sit against the wall. A Human woman wearing so much jewelry that the clanking could be heard even above the raucous chatter looked her over with a practiced eye and made a gesture that might have meant she’d be with M’dagka in a minute. Or it might have meant that her wounds weren’t worth healing at this time. M’dagka shrugged and pulled a smooth stone from her pocket, resigning herself to a long wait. She’d felt half-dead after her initiation, but strength was already seeping back into her body, and though her scrapes and bruises ached, they would not kill her.

     She walked the stone along the backs of her fingers, between the second and third knuckles, letting the noise around her fade as she concentrated on keeping the stone’s movements even. It had taken her more than a year to learn the trick, after Gek’ddr had shown it to her. He’d tried to teach her juggling too, but she’d refused, feeling that the stone trick was talent enough and guessing -- rightly -- that it was more difficult than juggling.

     Once she had a rhythm going, and no longer needed to focus exclusively on the stone, she peered up through lowered lashes at the room around her, studying the other people. A Human in a shirt of rusted chain sat to her left, toying with a small dagger and unsuccessfully fighting off a series of yawns. Directly in front of M’dagka, a young Elothean woman with her hair caught up in braids was industriously crushing something in a round mortar. M’dagka caught a rancid whiff of georin grass. Nearly everyone in the room, it seemed, was occupied with one task or another, and no one seemed more than mildly bothered by the crush of people or the noise. She supposed it was something one became used to, after a time.

     “M’dagka?”

     She started and dropped the stone, reaching out reflexively and grabbing it before it hit the ground. Her name was the last thing she’d expected to hear in this place.

     The Elothean from the Inn -- Ellian -- knelt down by her side, smiling at her. He still wore a ragged tunic, but a pale grey cloak hung from his shoulders, and he looked more at ease than when she’d seen him last.

     “Sure and I was not expecting to run into any of you this soon,” M’dagka said.

     “Nor I. Someone’s certainly given you a nasty beating.”

     She ignored the question in his eyes. “I’m not yet being the fighter I will be someday,” she said levelly. “You’ve fared well, from the look of you. But you’re not looking as if you need to be here.”

     Ellian smiled and raised his shirtsleeve up to show a tangled mass of scratches spidering out from underneath a white bandage. Looking closer, she could see faint scars along his neck and at his hairline. She winced sympathetically in spite of herself, then peered closer at his arm. It looked almost as if he’d dragged it through a thorn bush -- some of the cuts were deep, but there was no bruising. He certainly hadn’t gotten those wounds in a fight.

     “It look as though a cat did get himself mad at you,” she said. “Or you’ve been poking your hand into where you should not?”

     Ellian laughed softly. “I hadn’t thought about the oddness of it, with no bruises,” he said. “These are from a rock troll, if I remember correctly.”

     M’dagka gaped at him. “You do not be so powerful as that!” she exclaimed. “And only four days passed since the Inn?”

     “From a rock troll, but indirectly,” he corrected. “I can get your scratches, M’dagka, but I cannot heal bruising or scars, yet.”

     “Empath?! Gods strike me for a fool, I would have thought any other than that,” she said, genuinely surprised. “And there I was so sure you were a mage.”

     Ellian laid a hand on her arm, and M’dagka flinched slightly. The first touch of an Empath always unnerved her.

     “Have you seen any of the others, then?” she asked, then suddenly thought to add “I’m not having much to tip you with, you know.”

     “I’ll survive,” he said, winking at her. “And no, I haven’t seen any of the others. I’ve been cooped up here, trying to learn as quickly as possible.”

     M’dagka could feel the scrapes on her face slowly healing, and tried to rethink her initial impression of Ellian. He had seemed to think far too well of himself when they’d first met, and perhaps that was why she’d been so quick to dislike him. The arrogance was still there, in the set of his mouth, and yet he healed her carefully and gently, albeit without the swiftness of a more experienced Empath. And the feeling she’d had before -- that he was laughing at her -- was absent now.

     She tipped him three bronze when he was done -- a pittance and yet more than she could really afford -- and he smiled and studied her thoughtfully for a moment before standing and moving toward the other end of the room, where someone was calling out for help. M’dagka watched him go and then, with an inward shrug, stood herself and began making her way toward the door. She’d have the scars healed later. It was time to put her fingers to work more useful than walking a stone.