Rohvim #1: Metal and Flesh (35 page)

He closed his eyes and focused on what lay before him. In the center of the hall, with shafts of sunlight beaming down upon it, a royal figure now lay upon a raised platform. Aeden looked closer, and saw Rupert’s kingly face. Finery that would shame the royal robes of the king himself now clothed his body. No wounds were visible, his arm was intact, and he lay there, warm, pink, seemingly full of life, but asleep and unaware of his surroundings. They gathered around him.

Aeden asked,
Did he do all this?
 

Betha shook her head,
No. When I prepared his body, I came and made the preparations here too. I thought he would like it here. He loved the society. It was his new family. Oh, I almost forgot …
She turned around and wrinkled her face in concentration.

As they watched, the stream outside redirected itself and flowed down to the eastern side of the building, where it was let in by a new passage that opened from the outside directly into the council chambers, and from there into the white marble hall. Flowing in a raised granite stream-bed, it passed into the hall and split in two, wrapping around the raised platform where Rupert lay, and recombined before it flowed out the front door, down the steps, and then down to feed the lakes below.

The master healer remarked,
Simply beautiful, Betha. Well done.
They gathered around the sleeping Rupert and looked down at him. He seemed bigger, more muscular, heavier, and happier than he seemed in real life.

Aeden murmured,
He was like a brother to me, and I only had him for a few months.
Betha held up her hand, and a hawk calling above them entered the hall from one of the roof openings, alighting at the head of the raised platform.

As he looked around at his companions, Aeden realized that he could feel them all. Not some memory of emotion as when he touched the screens in Rupert’s mind, but real, live, raw emotion flowing from his friends. He felt peace. Love. Sadness. Loneliness. Regret. Joy. Bitterness. Anticipation. Hope. Somehow, passing though each of their minds to arrive at Rupert’s, he could feel them all, and in that moment felt a connection to other humans, other rohvim, that he never had experienced before.

He looked around at each of them, and felt their bad and their good. Their hope and their despair. Their hate and their charity. He felt all of them, each as a divided whole, each a disparate assortment of emotions and thoughts and plans and truths and lies and components all wrapped into a human-like rohva, or perhaps the other way. And beyond them, he felt something else, external to himself.

As he pondered, Betha spoke again,
Master Healer. Will you say the words?

The old man slowly nodded, and spoke.

To the end we’ve come, but not the end. The moments are gone, the eternal now is here. The arrow is flown and golden fields press on to our view. The fugitive moment is passed and the millennial year shall come at last. Of one mind and heart.

The rest of them murmured,
Of one mind and heart.

May his spirit fly east, over wind and zouree,
said Betha.

Aeden touched Rupert’s shoulder.
I wish he could make that journey in body.

Betha nodded.
We will. And he will meet us when we come.

They spent hours milling about the hall, pondering in the face of the water, walking the steps, watching Rupert sleep, talking to each other in hushed tones in the now sacred space. In time, they left, returning to the grey world, seeing that but a few minutes had passed in that arrangement. Betha covered Rupert’s cold, white face, and the three boys covered his body with earth and stones, a cairn raised up to the sky.

They returned to the camp, where the fire Darla had started was just now starting to roar. They gathered around the fire, sitting on logs or stones or earth. Aeden asked, “Those words, I had not heard them.”

Lady Ellen replied, “Long ago, in the first years of the society, they were found by Clara and a few others as they searched the land for guidance to our rohva past. They were found etched on an ancient gravestone, and were adopted as our funeral rite.”

Aeden asked, “Usually the funeral rites I’ve seen are set to music. Has this?”

Lady Ellen answered, “Not that I know of. I’ve only heard the rite itself repeated a few times.”

They sat in silence for several minutes. Aeden started humming, and then raised his voice in song. He repeated the words he had heard, but sang them out clearly, in a wandering, aimless melody, slow and thoughtful. The others remained and listened. After a few minutes, he finished, and his companions nodded their approval.

The master healer announced, “While you were preparing the burial, I entered the minds of several of the soldiers that Rupert had slain before he fell. One was barely alive when I found him, and I looked to see his memories of the past few days. We are very close. We shall arrive at Lord Shiavo’s compound tomorrow evening or the following morning. We should get our rest to prepare.”

With that, most of the company retired to bed. Aeden and Betha remained, transfixed by the leaping and crackling flames. After nearly half an hour, the flames died down to a smoldering smoke rising from glowing embers. Betha broke the silence, “Why didn’t you help him?”

Aeden couldn’t answer.

He closed his eyes. “I…” he stuttered, “I don’t know. I wanted to hurt Priam. He betrayed us. He was with those soldiers and he attacked the others.”

She shook her head, “He hasn’t betrayed us. Darla told me that when he appeared, he had the blank look of a drone soldier. He was captured, Aeden. Lord Shiavo must have overthrown his mind and turned him into a drone.”

Aeden replied, “You didn’t see his face when we were dueling. That was Priam alright, but he looked angry. He was not a drone.”

“Drone or not, why didn’t you leave him and rescue Rupert?”

Aeden stumbled again, searching for words. “I know. I should have. If I could go back …” He trailed off.

Betha held his arm, “Never mind. You are you, Aeden, and you can’t change that.”

“But I want to. I don’t want to be the me that let Rupert die, or that let Priam be captured, or that won that tournament. I want you. I want to be worthy of you.”

Betha squeezed his arm. “I love you.” Aeden looked at her, rather stunned, before she quickly added, “Like my brother. I never had a brother, but you have become dear to me…”

“But I don’t deserve your love. What have I done?”

She softly replied, “Would deserving it make it any greater?”

He had no answer. She continued, “And you have changed. I saw you in Rupert’s mind there at the end. You looked different. I’ve never seen you like that. You know you can’t hide your feelings from your face when you’re in a mind. You’ve never looked like that. You were almost glowing with… something … I don’t know.”

Aeden spoke, “About that. I could feel all of you. When I saw Rupert’s memories I could feel him too. I mean really felt him—I could feel what he was feeling and what all of you were feeling.”

Betha nodded, “I can as well, but only some of us can. We’ll explain later. For now, just be here.”

And the two of them rested by the fire, her arm around his, his head resting on hers.

An hour passed, the two of them holding each other by the now dim coals, before Aeden spoke again. “So, you love me?”

She turned her head to face him, their noses just inches apart, and replied, “I love Frederick, and Darla, and the master healer, and Rupert. Don’t get any ideas.”

“Right.” He answered softly, yet still enjoying the closeness of her presence. “I thought I had some mysterious rohva power over you to make you fall head over heels for me.”

“There’s only seven, and that’s not one of them. So sorry.” She patted his arm, even as she held it close.

“I’ve heard you all talk about the seven rohva powers. But I can’t account for all of them.”

She gathered her breath, “Well, there’s talking to another’s mind, there’s entering another mind, there’s healing, there’s transforming into anything in another mind, there’s shocking, and then the wide area shock that you’ve been learning with the master healer, with limited success apparently.”

“And the seventh?”

“The seventh is very tricky. I’ve only seen a few do it. It’s like a defense. You store up as if you’re going to shock someone, but instead of releasing it at a target, you aim for the air around you, and somehow it forms a barrier that nothing can get through. Momentarily, of course—it takes vast amounts of energy to sustain.”

“So no one uses it in combat?”

Betha looked over at him again, “Aeden, we’ve never had combat. We’ve been a society of healers, not warriors.”

“Right. I keep forgetting, what with all the blood and killing.”

“It won’t be like this forever.”

“When do you think it will end?”

She sighed. “When all has been set aright. Much evil has been done—by one who knows his true nature. When will it end? Maybe when the Creator himself intervenes. I don’t know.”

Aeden flashed her a lop-sided smile. “Well I hope it doesn’t come to that—then we’ll know we
really
screwed things up.”

Chapter Twenty

“It will end when the Creator intervenes. Then it shall begin.” –Prophecies of Tilda the Scribe, 100:1

They arose before dawn and hastily resumed their journey, feeling the goal now within their reach, though the immediate nearness of Rupert’s passing still numbed their minds and hearts. As they left the camp, they paused for a few minutes at Rupert’s grave, bidding him farewell.

They bowed their heads and stood silent for awhile, until Frederick called out, “See you around, Rupert!”, and walked off. The others left in ones and twos, leaving Aeden and Betha.

Aeden whispered, “Goodbye, friend.” and they turned, hands intertwined, looking to the east. They walked swiftly the whole day, passing through a flat, arid land full of dried mud and weeds. On and on they marched, diverting to neither the left nor right, but aiming straight for a distant range of mountains, though from the master healer’s knowledge gained the night before they knew the compound lay much closer. Aeden quickened his step and caught up to the master healer.

“Sir, I have a question. Several, actually.”

The healer motioned, “Ask, then.”

“Why would Priam steal that toy from you?”

“I’m afraid I do not know.”

“You don’t?”

“No. Are you surprised? I don’t know all things. I do have thoughts and feelings, but no facts.”

“Well then, what are your thoughts and feelings on the matter?”

The master healer, still hesitating, replied, “They are … my own. I will tell you only that I found the toy far away to the south and east of the southern city of Penumbra, in the mountains. It was many years ago when I was travelling to the kingdoms of the south, past Franckland, on a diplomatic mission of peace and healing—I was sent by the king to help alleviate the suffering there due to a plague. On the way, as I passed through the mountains I came upon a ruin—an ancient place overgrown by trees and under centuries’ worth of layers of needles and soil. There were still a few structures remaining, though, and inside one of them I found the artifact. It was made of pristine, gleaming metal, which was why it caught my eye. I would have expected any metal object found in a ruin to be severely rusted beyond recognition. I took it and saw that it actually was a mechanical contraption, though covered with a script that I never could decipher. I’ve kept it hidden, only showing it to people I’ve inducted into the society in order to assist me in explaining to them what we are, but I haven’t exactly kept it a secret. I’ve brought scores into the society since then.”

“Do you think one of them may have joined Lord Shiavo and told him of it?”

“I don’t know. I don’t know how any would find the toy significant at all. What gives me pause is that I saw another one, once. The lord of the city of Elbeth gave me an audience, and during our talk he took me on a tour of his estate. In one of the chambers, which he called his chamber of relics, he showed me a collection of ancient artifacts which had been gathered into his keeping over the years. I saw another gleaming metal toy in one of the display cases. “What a curious toy,” I remarked to the lord. “Yes,” he said, “the keeper of this chamber recently added it to the collection. A fascinating child’s plaything.” I looked, and it was nearly identical to mine, with small differences. “Where did he find it?” I asked, and he replied, “He goes often into the mountains to the east for hunting and sport. He came upon a ruin he had never encountered before and found it there. I paid him handsomely for it, as I always do when he brings me some new trinket.” I let the matter lie so as not to draw undue attention to it, but the coincidence remained in my mind ever since. Are there more of them? No one knows. Are they significant? Again, I do not know, but apparently someone thinks so to have sent Priam back to us to steal mine.”