The Hammer Unfalls

4.86 To See, or Not to See

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Lhani took a steadying breath. Scrying an Icer’s mind could readily lead a seer to madness. Lhani’s mother had warned her of that very thing before she’d been allowed to read her brother’s thoughts. Lhani had never communed with Arrad’s mind during times of stress. The moment she scryed him, Lhani gasped from the strain.

Hazy impressions of the hunt flashed through her mind. Her limbs moved with a surety and strength that Lhani herself did not have. Then a campfire and a good meal. Her ears flattened -- Arrad must be smiling -- as she watched Tomyko guide flames into spirals with his fingertip. Arrad invoked a flurry of snowflakes, which rushed into the flame and hissed into nothingness. Tomyko laughed at this rare display of immaturity. Lhani heard a distorted version of Arrad's voice from within her own head.

I might as well be playful in my last day as a child.

An innocuous memory. But from this imagery she could tell, immediately, several things.

First, she could tell they’d joined thoughts simply by the angles. Everything seemed slightly beneath her normal perspective, as though she stood on a stool, for Arrad had five inches on her.

Second, she could tell that Arrad was using every ounce of his willpower to keep calm. He held the campfire memory in his mind, but she could also sense the now. She’d already seen the blood of whatever he’d fought. Now she had the surging heartbeat and trembling sensations to go with it. Exhaustion and strain had thinned his reserves. But the relief of being home safely provided him a much needed buffer. She did not explicitly see these things, but intuited them from the jangling of his frayed nerves and the warmth he felt at her presence.

Third, she could tell that Arrad had intentionally chosen this peaceful moment of banter for her benefit. He’d chosen this scene to ease her in. That meant something unpleasant would soon follow, which made her afraid.

Lastly, she could tell that whatever memories Arrad would soon reveal to her, he’d sealed the rest of his consciousness off like a vise. Gray mists roiled at the edges of her periphery; troubled thoughts that he kept from her. Her stroll through his mind seemed fragile, like walking a balance beam over a lake of poison that would pull her into its depths if she took one wrong step.

I won’t let that happen, Lhani, Arrad-Lhani thought.

The fragment of memory drifted. The campfire vanished. Day replaced night. Arrad's chest fluttered. Through his eyes she saw a frozen dell, where trees had shattered at the base and splintered like twigs. The bodies of women in gray cloaks scattered the edges of the clearing, their limbs at odd angles, as though they had been swept away by a blast of hurricane-force wind.

Lhani reeled at the sight. A chill seeped into her. Winter in summer? And such destruction and death…

Arrad-Lhani searched for survivors, and found one: a young man, about her age. Dark hair jutted from his head in unkempt tufts. His eyes unsettled her: one dark, the other nearly colorless. Almost crystalline. Lhani watched Arrad's hand wave across the young man's face. The stranger merely stared, transfixed, at nothing.

She sensed movement and effort, as Tomyko and Arrad hauled the man to the horses and dropped him into the cart.

Get ready, Arrad-Lhani warned her.

Arrad's breath drew in sharply. Fear crawled through him as he turned to see a wall of cloud swallowing the foothills of the Avaunt Mountains. A blizzard, if the white whorls of cloud were any indication. It roiled and seethed with fury. The horses whinnied in fear.

Arrad’s breath became ragged, and his pulse quick. In a blur of blood, she sensed creatures attacking from air and ground. She sensed Tomyko’s flame, Arrad’s ice, and speartips jabbing.

You’re deliberately making this vague, Lhani chided Arrad.

Trust me, it is better this way.

And then, she heard a sound. It came from everywhere. No, not a sound. A tremor. The ground beneath her moved.

Lhani yelped and threw her arms out for balance, and the vision ended. She leaned against the log palisade of Hiehaven, standing on firm ground. Arrad looked at her in sympathy. He shook his head.

“I am as lost as you. It is no mere storm that comes.”

Lhani watched the stranger as men carried him away. What did he know? His glassy eyes fixed upon nothing in particular. They stared wherever his head happened to be pointing, with the occasional blink.

“Where did he come from?” she asked.

Arrad shrugged and sat on the ground, still trembling. Tomyko nodded at her, as though to say: “It is as bad as Arrad says, and worse.”

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Lhani felt her mother's hand on her shoulder.

“Come with me.”

The two went into Gerard's lodge. Scents of spiced oils roused her spirits. Gerard's salves had eased Lhani's hurts since she could remember.

Gerard greeted them as they walked in. His brown hair wavered in that place between long, but not long enough to pull into a ponytail. His dark eyes and bushy brows gave him an intense appearance, but his patient posture and half-smile exuded a sense of peace. In all her years she’d never known Gerard to yell. Nor had he ever backed down. At the moment, he’d rolled up the sleeves of his raw linen shirt, set his sling of potions aside, and hovered over the table where so many wounds had been healed.

The stranger lay strapped onto the table, padded with blankets, feet propped, and warm compresses on his head. Gerard tried to loosen the unfamiliar leather armor, which proved difficult. And the stranger’s woolen tunic seemed far heavier than it should be for an outing in the Summerling Ridge. He must have come from deep within the mountains.

Gerard stopped fiddling with the tunic.

“He is shocked, but I have steadied him. His pulse no longer flutters and his breath comes strong. I have seen these physical signs before. But nothing I know explains the rest.”

Lhani's mother touched the catatonic stranger and concentrated. “This affliction is neither physical nor mental. It is hard to glean. I am sure of one thing. He needs to be restored on all levels: physical, mental, essentiæl. His life hangs by a thread. A frayed one, at that.”

Lhani stared at the unmoving young man on the table, who did nothing but draw breath and blink his eyes. Those eyes stared nowhere, just as the mind behind them remained still. Lhani wiped her hand downward, closing his eyelids to shield herself from the unnerving sight.

Her mother clasped Lhani's hands.

“Do you recall the vigil?”

“Yes, mother.”

In truth, Lhani barely recalled that arcane scrap of song, but she'd pick up the tune as they went. At least, she hoped she would.

Lhani twined her voice into her mother's. Gerard set to work with more medications and physical ministrations. The three waged a struggle to save the boy's life. Her brothers came in, as did others, but Lhani focused only on the song. Women from the village dining hall brought broth and bread for the hunters, and still Lhani sang. When the young man began to convulse, Lhani raised her voice in a calming chant. She watched Gerard force blood through the stranger's body with vigorous pounding of his chest and chafing of his limbs.

Hours passed. Her brothers slept on the floor. The singers unclasped hands. Lhani's mother gave her a tired smile of satisfaction.

Gerard dimmed the oil lamp. At last, Lhani sensed they had brought the stranger back from the brink.

The glass shade of the oil lamp pinged inside its socket as a tremor ran through the room.

Tomyko snapped awake. His voice rose in panic.

“Run!”

Tomyko found the door before Gerard stopped him with a hand.

“Wait! You don't know what you are dealing with.”

Tomyko glared back over his shoulder with a fierce light in his eye. She knew his temper well.

Arrad stared at the stranger on the table. “He's our only hope of knowing what comes. Mother, have you any way to see what is in his mind's eye?”

Mhagi wiped her hand over her face and shook her head at Arrad.

“I have no affinity with him. His essentiæ are addled beyond recognition.”

Lhani frowned. Her mother said his essentiæ “are” addled. Plural?

“What do you mean, mother?”

“It is strange. He has the energy of ice and wind, and a fundamental darkness at his core. If he were a woman, I’d suspect he is a Still Mage, and those are rare indeed. I haven't heard tell of one in the last two thousand years. But he cannot be a Still Mage. So I don’t know what he is.”

Arrad was about press the issue. His thirst for answers was plain on his face. Lhani could already tell. Her mother could, too, and laid a peremptory hand on his arm.

“Arrad. This catatonia of his is deliberate. It protects his mind against intrusion. Still Mages once had that power. Raiding his memories could be dangerous for him, but especially for us. If he can ply enough essentiæ to bring winter into summer, to kill with ice shards as large as trees... he could easily destroy Hiehaven.”

Arrad shook his head in disbelief, though Lhani had seen the truth through his very eyes. “No one has that much power, mother. No one.”

“Ordinarily I would agree with you, Arrad.” Gerard's voice sounded as deep as it did gentle. “But this is not an academic debate. Something has that much power. It is either here in this room, or headed this way.” Gerard inclined his head to Lhani's mother and looked at her meaningfully.

“What should I do, Gerard? Force my mind into his?”

“It's just short of murder!” Lhani protested, stepping between Gerard and her mother.

The floor rumbled again. Tomyko screamed, in frustration more than fear.

Perhaps they would have argued, or made a choice they’d each regret the rest of their lives. But movement stopped them all.

Lhani jumped as the stranger unbuckled the leather strap anchoring him to the table and sat up. Lhani stared in fascination as his mismatched eyes moved around the room, taking in every detail. Within his detachment, a glimmer of urgency arose.

He paused on Lhani's mother and her snow white hair. It fell in a loose braid to her bottom, where a few inches of black remained.

Lhani guessed why he had paused at her mother's hair. Mhagi wasn't old. Her smooth brown skin flushed with health. Yet a seer pays a price if she lingers too long in another's mind. Her body fuels the vision from elsewhere. Memory, or blood, or bone. Skilled seers draw on their hair's pigment. Mhagi's hair, once the same dark brown as Lhani's, now shone pure white. The hallmark of a seer. It meant her mother could read the stranger’s mind.

The young man reached out his hand to take Mhagi's. She tried to grasp it, but as soon as they touched she cried out and pulled away.

“What is it?” Lhani ran to her.

“So strong! His mind… it seethes.”

Lhani felt the stranger's eyes on her back, and somehow knew he wanted her to read him. She straightened and looked at her family and friends gathered in the lodge. Her heart seemed louder than usual and she found it hard to breathe. Lhani swallowed deliberately and settled herself. She turned around, looked into those mismatched, unsettling eyes, and raised her hands to take his.