37 - A Father's Sword

Dukir, posing as Amir Isfahsalar, rode behind Raghnall, holding his mount’s eyeflaps wide open to keep the bird moving in the rain.

Mariush, standing off to one side instead of at Diryish’s right hand. The once Radian zardukar stood perfectly hidden, veiled tight, drooping like a flower deprived of water.  She acted well.  Both of you were perfect as the ‘suspected lovers’, the eyes of the court followed your every twitch of veil your every glance. My daughter told me about every wild speculation that morning.

The yearning in Raghnall’s eyes that he tried to hide, her turning her face away from his look, after the glance at Diryish.  The old man’s contempt of both as they stood metres apart but together before him.  It was well played out, my friend.  No one cares to anger his Radiance by accusing them directly.  He'd have had to kill them both then and no one wanted to force that particular issue... especially since they were so careful and there was no proof, they were never caught.

They have begun to truly fall in love with one another.  It is as clear as the spots on my young idiot’s war-bird.  Young officers, no matter how meritorious, need an old amir to keep them on the straight road. All of the war moas were miserable in the rain, fluffing and re-fluffing their brown and white mottled feathers, hissing, complaining and trying to stop and sit down in the road.

They were not the best of the mounts available to the Myrmidons of Lainz, Shiadan’s disgrace being pointed out on the most basic of levels. He had been demoted and sent off to the worst posting on the edges of the Empire, on the edges of the Avrilainz river… what most people were now calling by the Milar name, the Hieriem.

You're pining for the girl and doing your best to be noble about the whole thing. You're thankful that the Emperor didn't just decide that you loving her was treason. And you and I, my friend, are going to find out if a certain very important boy made it all the way to Viltaria, or if someone quietly cut his throat for some long remembered Lainz warcrime.

**

“Ilax,” Kyrus said.  “I know I have a long way to go before you can be my Zon every day but… am I so bad?” The warrior looked over at the boy sitting on the hearthstone, his eyebrows knotted together, confused. “What do you mean?”

“These extra classes. I know I stink but I’m surely I’m not worse than, say, Jashi and he doesn’t need extra tutoring.” Ilax laughed.

“Oh, Kyrus you have it so backwards.” He set the cat down. “I have something to show you.” He swung up the ladder-like staircase to his sleeping loft and disappeared toward the back. He didn’t bother to use the striker to light the candle, apparently knowing where the mysterious thing was.

The fire crackled quietly and Kyrus heard the surdeniliarch snatch up something and swing down again. Unthinkingly he set one foot against the outside rail of his stair, clinging to the rail on the other side and slid down to land on his feet.Clutched in one hand was a Lainz patterned sword in a plain black moa leather sheath.

Ilax drew it with a metallic sound and the medium-length slashing sword shone bright in his hand. He took up a page from the table and with three quick motions of the paper against the blade had four segments fluttering to the floor. It slid back into the sheath with a snap and he held it out toward Kyrus. “This is yours. Your father would want you to have it.”

He froze for a moment. “Ilax... was this... was this...”

“Your father’s sword? Yes. One of them. You’ll see what I mean in a moment.”

Kyrus took the scabbard as if accepting a high blessing. He laid it across his lap, his fingers running over the tooled leather. “The design is called ‘Moa Feathers’,” he said softly. He took hold of the hilt, the leather on it worn into a pattern of fingers, the grip of his father’s hand on it, over years. Renewed and worn in again. It was like taking his father’s hand in his, in a way he had never dreamed.

Even though his hand was still small on it, he could feel how well it would suit him, when he got his growth. He tightened his hand on it and drew. He nearly dropped it in shock. There was only a stub of blade perhaps the width of three fingers, a faint sparkle in the air where the blade should be.

“Is this a joke?” He was nearly choking, enraged that Ilax would do such a thing. But Ilax was waving him to sit down again. He’d stood up in his shock, one hand clutching the scabbard still, the other the stump of sword.

“No, no. It’s part of the warrior training and yes that is... or was your father’s sword. The one he carried when he fought me.”

“But... how... when? It can’t be broken, you just drew it and...” Kyrus sat down again with a thump, waved the supposed stump of sword at the paper on the floor. He was startled when Ilax drew his feet away as sharply as if he’d waved an unsheathed blade.

“Careful.”

“Why? There’s no blade there!”

“Yes. There is. You’re trained enough that it is barely visible. Hold the blade up between your eyes and the candle-flame.”

Kyrus looked at Ilax, sitting in his heavy chair, wearing the brown and grey sweater with one cuff ragged, his hair, uncut since the war ended, pulled back in a tail with wisps trailing out at chin level. “You... you wouldn’t play with me, Ilaxindal Vania would you?” The man’s gray eyes narrowed a little.

“No, Kyrus. Pay attention. This is important. It could make or break you as a warrior. Your doubt insults me, lad.”

Kyrus dropped his eyes, his hands occupied so he could not make the minor salaam to apologize. “I’m sorry, Naser.”

The Milari waved a hand. “Now pay attention with that blade. You’ll take a finger off inadvertently waving it around like that.”

“But there’s no blade!” His voice rose in confusion.

“Shion!” Ilax’s voice cracked out like the Zon’s and Kyrus snapped to attention, his hands bracing sword hilt and scabbard the same way he braced his stick in class. “I gave you an order student!”

“Yes, Zon!” The words came automatically and Kyrus raised the sword hilt in front of the candle as if to look through the blade, if there were one. And blinked.

There was something blocking the candle-light, at least partly. The shimmer he’d thought he’d seen, was a twisting, moving, breathing thing, all contained in the space that should be a blade. “What? What is this?” He looked to Ilax and then back to the ghostly image of sword blade in his hand.

“Remember the testing I gave you?  You Lainz have the idea that your Light and Dark have decreed there be no more Dee’s. But that isn’t true. Your best warriors are ‘manders. They train and create not only their skill but their weapons. Stop!” His voice cracked out, freezing Kyrus’s motion. He’d set the scabbard down on the table and had raised his hand toward the phantom image of a blade. “It still cuts. It’s the cut that seems to come first, even if the warrior cannot see the edge of the blade.”

Ilax bent to pick up a piece of cut paper from the floor and drew it over the almost sword in Kyrus’s hand and it fell into two, just that quickly. “There is metal dust inside the scabbard and when a ‘mander draws the stump, he ‘mands a sword.”

“That isn’t possible... It isn’t, is it? We... we... there are only ‘manders under the old Queen.  Nothing else.”

“No. Our Dees are convinced there is still ‘mandery in Lainz, and powerful Dees. Of course the belief of your warriors that there were no more Manders in Lainz made it possible for us to win the war with a minimum loss of life.  And your minor ‘manders wielding their power without knowledge of what they were truly doing.”

“But. But. But that means my father was... you said... and I... if I can do this... then I... and... you!!!! And I...!!!!” Kyrus sank back down on the hearth as if someone had punched him in the gut, knocking the wind out of him. Your father was a high Ceemander... He'd forgotten that, or tried hard not to remember it.

He let the tip of the almost sword drop and a dent appeared in the wood of the floor as if the sharp point of it truly rested there. He shook himself and carefully, so as not to miss and slash his own hand, re-sheathed the blade, setting the scabbard down at his feet.

“I can do what your father did... manifest a sword like that, but it takes a lot of power and I have a perfectly good forged sword. It is a good trick if the you are ever unarmed on the field, grab up almost anything as a hilt and you can be rearmed in an instant... of course, your father was strong enough to a ‘mander a sword without a hilt to build on. That is a very, very rare talent.”

“But... the extra classes... I thought...” Ilax got up and got down the tea pot as Kyrus stammered.

“Take a breath, Kyrus. You’re doing all right. You were tested and you have the possibility to mander as a warrior. If you’re comfortable with it, you may train as a mander at the school.”

Kyrus slid all the way down to the floor and just watched Ilax making tea. “I... feel like I’ve been hit in the head with a board, Ilax. Just let me think, please.” There, that was still polite even though I’m in shock.

Ilax made tea and shovelled in two teaspoons of butter before handing it to Kyrus, who took it, numbly, saying “Sa mar-cat ‘n heat yowlin’ her head off in my thinkin’ tub, Naser. Claws an’ jaws ‘n all about what my mother-dipper truly was.”

The war-master sat down comfortably in his chair again. “Yer mother-dipper wer a flash sabre, feather spitter, he were,” he answered.

Kyrus just blinked at him and sipped his tea. “You cannot shock me, Ilax, even with that. You’ve told me before that my father and I both were and are ‘mander warriors, even though every Lainz is terrified that the Two will punish any sign of it in us. Is that why he died? Is that why he’s buried under a rock on your mountain, because of his... gift?”

Ilax looked down into the depths of his cup. “No, Kyrus. No. The Light and the Dark you worship would never destroy a man like your father just because he had such a gift. I believe the Two give the gifts of ‘mandery, if you must believe in Deities. Your father did not die on a cold mountainside for any such imagined sin. Trust me on that.”