The Mountains Rise (21 page)

“How did you get this?” he asked her.

“Some days I care for the horses,” she told him, making a brushing motion with one
hand. “No one notices if I take a few from the tail.” Her lips parted slightly,
exposing her upper teeth slightly.

Is she smiling?

A flood of emotion struck Daniel at that realization. He had never seen Amarah, or
anyone else in Ellentrea, smile. He didn’t count Thillmarius.
The She’Har’s smiles were often more frightening than his serious expressions.

Standing suddenly, Daniel put his arms around Amarah before she could retreat, his
cheeks wet. “Thank you,” he said honestly, though his voice had gone hoarse.

She
stiffened in his grasp, unfamiliar with such affection. “We’ll be punished again,”
she said fearfully, probably thinking he meant to seduce her once more. She tried
to pull away.

He held her tighter. “No, this is different. I won’t try that again. This is just
a hug.”

After a long moment she relaxed, returning the embrace
,
and the two of them stood there for some time, content. Finally she spoke, “You
are crying,” noting the wetness on her bare shoulder.

“So are you,” returned Daniel.

Touching her own face
,
she seemed surprised, “I am.”

They continued holding one another until Daniel began to become noticeably aroused
and released her. “We’ll be punished,” he observed sadly.

Amarah glanced at him once more, making eye contact,
which was unusual in itself. Then she glanced downward, eyeing his erection
.
“You are beautiful,” she said, borrowing one of the phrases that Daniel greeted her
with each day. Reaching out she touched him there casually before turning and leaving
without another word.

Oh hell,
thought Daniel, suddenly overwhelmed by lust.

Later, when he had regained his calm, he couldn’t help but laugh as he reviewed her
statement. “You are beautiful,” he mused aloud, “that has to be the first time any
woman has ever said that to me before, especially when referencing
you.
” He glanced downward.

Daniel spent considerable time using his aythar and both hands to carefully splice
the horse-hair into fine but strong strings. The amount she had brought him wasn’t
enough to completely string his cittern but it allowed him to make enough to string
one and test it. It produced a different sound than the clear notes produced by his
mother’s cittern, but it was strong and vibrant.

Amarah appeared with more horse hair a few days later
,
and he was busily working on it when Garlin arrived that afternoon, motioning for
him to exit the small room.

“It’s time,” he told Daniel.

Sighing, Daniel followed the warden, impatient to finish the arena match and return
to his project. Crafting the instrument was the first thing that had given him any
hope in the bleak existence that his life had become.

A surprise awaited him at the arena, however.

Thillmarius walked with him to the edge of the field and waited for his inevitable
question.

“There are two men,” said Daniel.

The She’Har smiled, “Indeed, Tyrion, there are two. The crowd was becoming tired
of the old matches. You were besting your opponents too easily.”

Daniel glared back at him, “Two doesn’t make a challenging match, it makes for a slaughter!”

Thillmarius raised his eyebrows, “Perhaps, though I think you may be underestimating
your abilities.”

Daniel began swearing, but he strode forward into the arena boldly nonetheless. The
crowd’s voice surged as he walked to his place
,
and the small contingent of Illeniels
who
had begun attending over the past months cheered more loudly than any. Daniel ignored
them, listening to the announcer in order to hear the names of the groves that his
opponents hailed from.

Centyr and Prathion,
he noted clinically,
an interesting combination.

The signal lights turned red and his two opponents wasted no time. The Centyr surrounded
himself with a strong shield while quickly starting to craft a magical companion.
The Prathion vanished.

Daniel didn’t hesitate, running sideways
,
he
didn’t bother drawing a circle;
instead he ripped a massive section of earth ten feet deep from the area the two
men were standing in, sending it skyward and then pulling it toward himself.

The Centyr mage was forced to abandon his cast in order to save himself from an awkward
fall
,
while the raging wall of earth made the Prathion abandon his invisibility and shield
himself or lose his skin
.

Marching forward
,
Daniel met the oncoming wall of earth and wrapped it around himself, forming it into
a cyclone of screaming sand and small stones. Imbuing it with his aythar
,
the storm created a deadly and impenetrable shield of violence around him. It extended
for ten feet in every direction
,
and his control was absolute. Advancing steadily Daniel’s furious storm kept pace
with him, never wavering.

The Centyr mage began again, this time managing to finish his creation, a large bull-like
monste
r.
M
eanwhile
,
his companion had become invisible again
,
once the earth had bypassed him and become part of Daniel’s cyclone.
The magical bull charged at him but Daniel ignored it
, continuing to move with his storm, steadily approaching his Centyr foe. At the
same time he extended a thin, woven mat of aythar along the upper surface of the ground
until it covered the floor of the arena.

The mat was a trick he had used countless times in the past. It didn’t require a
lot of power
,
and while it was in place
,
he could pinpoint the footsteps of his opponents, a useful ability when dealing with
invisible mages.

The bull was thrown back when it attempted to breach the cyclone and get at Daniel.
The storm kept moving, and the Centyr man was forced to run before it, knowing his
shield wouldn’t stand up to its relentless violence.

The Prathion mage abandoned his
invisibility as he realized its uselessness given the strange power covering the earth.
Instead he directed his strength into raising a wall of earth to try and slow the
storm’s advance and buy his ally some time. Moving sideways
,
he passed close to where Daniel had been standing when he had first summoned his
storm.

Two arms encased within blades of pure aythar erupted from the earth, neatly bisecting
the Prathion mage from groin to shoulder. Rising from the loose soil Daniel stood,
covered in dirt and grinning evilly at his remaining opponent. He had hidden himself
under a thin layer of earth while his dirt-devil had hidden him and then used his
mat of aythar to occlude his enemies
’
magesight while it moved onward. They had assumed he was still within the storm
,
and the power that covered the
ground
had prevented them from finding his true location.

The mage still alive gasped as he realized the ruse. Calling his beast away from
the storm he directed it toward Daniel’s current location while he continued running
from the raging winds. Daniel ignored both and picked up a loose rock from the ground.
Imitating the highly effective attack he had
learned from another opponent almost a year ago,
he sent the stone h
urtling toward the Centyr mage as he ran.

Daniel was already tiring, so his
stone struck with less force
than
it might otherwise have had, but it served its purpose. The mage was knocked from
his feet and the cyclone swallowed him before he could recover.

Diverting the remainder of his strength, Daniel hastily
drew
a circle on the ground and erected a much stronger shield around himself just before
the bull
reached him
. He was so weak
by
then that it almost failed
,
and he was forced to release his concentration on the whirlwind. It hardly mattered,
though. The second mage was already dead, his mangled corpse falling to the ground
as the winds died.

Daniel stood, victorious, although his limbs shook with weakness and spent adrenaline.
It was all that he could manage just to keep the circle up until the She’Har came
to destroy the Centyr spell-beast and declare him the winner, but he refused to show
his frailty to them.

The audience watched in stunned silence before erupting with a wall of sound, cheering
for the wildling’s victory. Over the past year, Daniel had gone from disregarded
to become their favorite
,
and his latest achievement sent them into f
renzy. “Tyr-ion, Tyr-ion, Tyr-ion…,” their chants affected him like a drug.

“You continue to develop, wildling,” said Thillmarius as he walked Daniel back to
meet Garlin.

“Until you manage to kill me,” Daniel responded.

“You will never face less than two again,” warned the She’Har lore-warden.

Mad with blood, as he often was after a match, Daniel grinned fiercely at him, “I
like a challenge.”

***

A few days later Daniel had finally spliced and whipped enough horse hair to string
his cittern.
He plucked it lightly at first, fearing to break the strings, before he began to carefully
tune it, trying to match the sounds it produced to the notes he remembered when he
dreamed of music.

He had always had a good ear, but he was forced to retune the cittern after playing
a bit, realizing some of the notes weren’t correct after all. His fingers felt awkward
and clumsy even though they remembered the patterns readily enough. Faltering at
first, he began to play, slowly, but not daring to stop.

The first short melody reduced him to tears. He had been denied music for so long
,
it seemed almost too much for his soul to bear. It took him half an hour before
he felt composed enough to begin again.

Once he started, it was impossible to keep his hands off the cittern. The pegs turned
out to be too smooth and he was forced to retune the instrument after almost every
song.
H
e
eventually
grew tired of the constant retuning and created new ones from some of his left over
wood, making them slightly larger to fit more tightly into the holes.

The new pegs worked much better
,
and soon he could play for a while before needing to tune the cittern again. An
hour passed before he broke the first string.

Frantic he put the instrument aside and began repairing it, using the unbroken end
to begin a new splice with some of his left over hair.

I’ll have to make spare strings if Amarah will keep bringing me more,
he thought to himself. Stopping to work on it drove him to distraction now that he
had once again been able to enjoy music
.

When Amarah arrived that evening he didn’t tell her that his project had been completed.
He asked her for more horse-hair instead, wanting another day or two to practice before
showing her what he could do. He was rusty and to his ear his music sounded rough
and awkward.

Her first time hearing music should be something she’ll remember, not my clumsy clawing
at the strings.

It was a week before he finally let her hear him. He had tuned the instrument carefully
and was lightly strumming it when Amarah arrived with his breakfast that day. Smiling
at her
,
he motioned toward the bed beside him, indicating she should sit. She looked at
him curiously
,
but her face changed within seconds as his hands began to pluck the strings.

She stood still, struck by a feeling she could not contain, unable to move for fear
of losing it as he played a light
,
capricious tune that spoke of happy days and merry dances.
Long minutes passed while she watched him, rapt by the sounds that emerged from beneath
his hands. Amarah’s cheeks were marked by tracks that had formed in the dirt on her
cheeks as she cried, unable to understand the beauty she was experiencing.

When Daniel finally stopped
,
she approached him cautiously, as though seeing him in a new light. The look of
awe on her face was both humbling and disconcerting. “I have never heard such a thing
before,” she said in a hushed tone.

“It’s just music, Amarah,” he said nonchalantly. “Where I come from we listen to
it almost every day.”

“More,” she begged.

He obliged her, playing a softer melody to appeal to the
gentler
emotions, letting his attention become wholly absorbed by the music and the motions
of his fingers on the strings. When he finally stopped
,
he found her close, leaning in to stare at him with wide eyes.

Pushing his cittern aside he felt his heart begin to race
,
and he leaned in to kiss her. She was clumsy and awkward, having probably never
experienced such a delicate thing, but she met his lips eagerly. After several minutes
he drew back, aware that his body was reacting too strongly again.

“We’ll have to stop,” he told her.

She glanced downward, noting his gallant reflex with hungry eyes. Reaching over she
stroked him and then moved downward, to kiss him softly in a manner he had never expected.

“We’ll be punished,” he warned her.

Amarah shook her head, “Only if we come together as man and woman. Other things do
not bring punishment. Let me show you.” Her eyes were gentle in a way that he had
never seen before.

“I love you,” he confessed some time later, as he experienced something he had never
dared to dream of with another person again.

Amarah gazed at him strangely, “What do you mean?” While the people of Ellentrea
still used the word
,
it was only something one said regarding food or objects, not something one would
say to another person.

“I’ll show you,” Daniel replied
and then
he returned her favor.