• Peigra's Blog:

Calton's Shadow, Pt 10

By: Peigra

No matter how many times she had seen one, it was always the first time, with the same terror slowly, claw by claw, crawling up her throat and clutching at her windpipe.

It always began the same, an odd, hissing noise that slowly began to swirl, a reverse drainage that was oddly beautiful to watch as it sat, gathering its strength, its forces, and gave time for those below to scatter in terror of their own. One could see an odd stippling, rainbow-like and quite beautiful, and mesmerizing also; Peigra had seen people captivated for hours by simply watching them, going from pre-rift to pre-rift just to watch the show despite the danger and what would be unleashed after it became something less beautiful.

Only those within the rift knew how long it would be until they had gathered themselves in enough strength to punch through into Telara and attempt their foothold. Forces normally started gathering the moment the hissing noise was heard, or the pre-rift sighted, and could wait sometimes a day before it opened itself and its nightmares became reality.

Rifts did not care where they landed, and Peigra had seen the damage that they did when they settled over farmhouses, waystations, battlefields, she had seen one come into life in a riverbed once, and watched those spilling from it drowning in their own mishap. That had been a day of celebration, for it had been one less battle, and they had taken a long rest while watching the fire creatures destructing themselves, one by one, as they formed, appeared, and were smothered by the very water they had landed on.

Without a means to manipulate the rifts, at first, they had appeared randomly anywhere, and there had been only terror and death in their wake. Study had taken years to formulate that there were, when it came to a conclusion, only six different rifts, but that did not lessen the fear of people who went to sleep, listening to the hissing, packs and wagons and horses ready to take them away to some semblance of safety, though what safety that was had remained to be seen. All the lands were subject to them, and it was a rare place that boasted it had never been hit by one, but there had been a few, in the Before, that had been rift-free and, to Peigra’s limited knowledge of such things, had been used as places of recovery and where the wounded were settled.

Some had claimed to have the ability to open them, to use their magick, technologies, studies to open them in different forms. Peigra had never seen someone purposely call upon a rift and demand it open, though there had been many people who had been in battles with her, people she had trusted, who had spoken of seeing such things. If they were on an open field, water would slowly leech into the soil and could help the defenders, or on the sands, was better. Fire could be summoned in the colder regions, and without much to sustain it due to the blowing winds and the lack of their own fuel sources, the invaders could be beaten down easily. But life was not always kind by accomodating what the defenders wanted.

And the rifts did not care either way.

They had one duty, and one alone...two, if one was a bit more mystical of the whole matter. The rifts were there to gather the forces of Telara against a common foe, that was it, there was a simple reason and that was all. Some that Peigra had known, in the Before, had spoken that the second reason was to show that Aedraxis had been right, that there were other powers that could be tapped, and each rift was a reason that magick could be as dangerous as it was beneficial. Every rift since his death had been proof that not all ideals were good ones, and the good of the many was not always healed over by a new leadership or idea.

She lifted her head, trying to stay on Baltik’s back, and knew it would be a long battle. This one had the odd brownish-gold colors, and the earthen beasts who came from those were as tough as the Bahmi they had come to exterminate. Earth rifts were a bit of a challenge, in that it was difficult to find any good ground to fight them on, being that everything one walked on was earth.

The Bahmi had adopted an odd tattoo, vine-like and detailed, that wound itself around a warrior’s arms, and was added to with each rift that was closed. Those who had seen lengthy campaigns against the rifts were well decorated, and Peigra had often commented on them when she saw them, and the pleased nod from the Bahmi who were not only eager to speak of them, but appreciative that someone non-Bahmi recognized what they were. She had been present for the last earth rift tattoo a Bahmi companion had gotten, closing the circle around their massive bicep, and their immense pride at having finished such a task and living to tell of it.

The rift, hissing and blocky ahead of her, as Baltik stopped, his hooves gouging the sand in all directions, and Peigra tumbled off him for lack of anything to hold onto. There was a commotion around her, and she was helped up and dazed, and bit back a cry when someone touched her to help her to her feet. Definitely something broken, but her ribs? Her arm? Something on that side she was too dazed still from her soul journey to remember.

The something in her hand bumped others, and she stared at it, wondering where it had come from, and had no time to wonder. It was there, only it and Baltik knew how, and she had nothing else.

There were warriors, men and women, fighting some of the hulking beasts that had come from the rift, towering and clunky, walking chunks of stone as a child formed a bit of clay between their hands, rounded and misshaped. Someone had thought to give them two arms so that they could pound enemies down, and no one was grateful for that afterthought of creation. There were two of them, and Peigra went forward, wondering why the sand on one side of her was higher than the other and did not think of it. Someone helped her along and she came to the edge of the sands, where the rocky rift ground came to strike it.

There was always an odd tingle-jolt when she walked onto the desecrated land that a rift created for itself as a foothold. She had asked others, but they had either become so jaded against the rifts they no longer felt it, or they did not admit such things. Battles and personal scars and the loss of friends did odd things to people, and Peigra had had to admit that, in Before, perhaps it had been a good thing she had been taken from the farm and had not been able to get back to them.

Even now, she was not aware that the letter of her death, in Before, had gone out only two days after her arrival, and her family had thought her dead for years when she had been roaming the lands trying to save it. All the letters she had sent to them had been burned, all the questions Purda had demanded of those who had taken her granddaughter had been unanswered; they had only had her two days and she had died? Peigra had not had enough time to talk to her grandmother in the Now, to learn of Before, of what they had lived through, and Rira of the Now had said little on either matter.

Perhaps it had been better that way, but Peigra had not been given a chance to know either way.

She stared up at it, at the odd mushroom-shaped cap that topped every rift, and the feelers, tendrils, clouds that came down from it. The most disgusting were the ones from the rifts that were green, with their odd protrusions that often Peigra could not look at, pulsing plant-like and bloated, they were an abomination of everything that she knew of plants. She had been ill the first time she had seen one, and she always looked to the rock and crystal formations that hung from the skies above, wondering how they did not fall on their heads. She had feared they would, and had gently, but firmly, been rapped on the head by someone behind her, that first time, so many lifetimes ago it seemed.

The Bahmi were an organized race, and from the moment a child could walk and begin to understand the world around them, they were enmeshed in one understanding: life was what it was, and everything had to die so that others might live. This was a hard rule for a child to understand, not a difficult one when they caught a fish and it was prepared with their assistance and they ate of it. But it was still a hard one to instil into the mind of a child who was so enraptured with the world around them, and often got into mischief trying to explore matters too soon.

As they grew, children began to firmly understand that the hunting parties searched for prey to feed the village, and in turn, the village gathered in a tight wall against the sand walkers and the larger dangers to ensure their future. Children were given their due when they were the ones to bring back food, large or small, as everyone contributed, and because one’s kill was larger than another’s did not make it any less special or unwanted. What grains were grown along the shore of the lake in the mucky silt were harvested as well, and seedlings replanted as they died on the decaying roots of their parent plants. There was no such thing as waste. Bones were sharpened into needles, hollowed into flutes, necklaces, tusks and larger bones traded with others for fake trophies as such city folk deemed worthy.

Something had to die that something else might live.

For Peigra, it had been a lesson she had learned on the farm, not as the children in the desert did, every day, having to watch for snakes and scorpions and the sand walkers, who could come in great numbers sometimes and snatch children away, goods, burn grain supplies that were necessary. She had come to the desert and learned an entirely new facet of that phrase, and had come to expect that every day she would be fighting for her life, as she had been on the farm, but in a different means.

This, as she looked up at the earthen rift before her, felt the crunch of gravel beneath her feet...when had she lost her boots? She had a moment to glance down, to realize her feet were burning on the hot sand and now the gravel, but there was that moment, just a moment, and it was gone as she closed her eyes.

She had had many teachers since she had been taken from the farm in Before, and many of them she resented for taking her, but there had been one man who had been a bit kinder than the rest, and she used that term loosely. None of them had been kind, nor had they had the time to be, and in hindsight, Peigra understood their need for haste to teach the children quickly, but how much more would she have learned with them, as opposed to closing her mind to their beatings and learning more out in the lands themselves?

She had been taught to close her eyes a moment, and focus, to feel what was around her. It was critical that, before any spell was gathered and concentrated upon, that she knew exactly what was around her. A rock in her way could rebound the spell upon her, or worse, be the subject of the spell and her enemy laughing as it cleared the rubble, and she was moments from death. Nothing had surprised her in Before, not after her first battles, and the endless healing of the wounded.

She knew this area, for it was to the north of Nal’s clan, halfway between the great spires and the clan, and had probably taken out a tent or two that had been set back from the clan’s original boundaries as families expanded. She had no time to spare for the wreckage on the other side of the rift, for there was blood, and much of it, and she moved herself oddly, feeling the power surging as it always did.

It was orgasmic, the thing within her that she had been born with, the thing they called magick, that was fed on her soul, the mana within her, and none of it had made sense, but she still remembered the first person she had healed, and the exhilaration of watching them soothed. That they had gotten up and, some time later, become decapitated had not helped the matter, or Peigra’s sudden ballooned ego at what she had done.

She felt it, rising as embarrassment did on her face, cold or heat, coming up from within as if she was ill to her stomach, and her fingers began to glow, as they always did, a faint, odd glow that had been her undoing in Before, the glow that someone had seen while she had been in the barn with a horse. Somewhere behind her, it was that moment where she felt everything around her, the living something that gave everything life, it made the living alive and the dead without, and she touched each face behind her, Baltik standing, every last cowering person who was watching rift.

In front of her, she felt the strength of those who were trying to beat down the twin horrors that had come from the rift, and she felt them, one by one, and concentrated, and let her magick flow to the one who needed it the most. It was the moment of thought and the next of what had been gathered, as one did a breath before they leapt into water, and the magick was gone, thrown towards the one who needed it.

She was hazily aware of their suddenly resurgence, and looked around, and several faces turned to stare at her. She concentrated, found another, and sent the magick, and fell into the trance-state that always consumed her when the magick deemed it needed her body and she thought too slowly to keep up with its processes.

It began to form a pounding rhythm in her body, with her heartbeat racing, and she let the magick rise and fall, gathering her own soil and sending it out to heal others, to keep them going against a foe that, eventually, had to realize it could not win, and would send one of its minor lieutenants or perhaps unwanted washouts and it would be no more. That could take minutes, hours, she had been at rifts that had taken two and three days to seal due to their numbers and the monstrosities that consumed the dead.

Beneath her feet, the irregular, cracked pottery-like pattern, geometric and random all in itself, it crunched and moved with a life of its own, and she ignored it, the rough pebbles that dug into her soles. Beneath her was part of the reason she was in her trance, but ahead of her, that was the greater reason. Above, the odd crystalline protrusion hung over their heads, seeming to want to break off and crush them all, and from that, the clouds of hazy golden-tan that floated around. For one looking at it for the first time, the threat of it all collapsing from above was nearly the greater fear than what was coming out of the rift.

The waves came, as if timed, to exhaust the defenders and then, when they believed it was over, that the rift had finally given all it could, another came, just as they were rested, recovered, their wounded and dead moved as best they could out of the area to some semblance of the word safety, a word that might no longer exist, save in the minds of their children.

As she had in the Before, and again in the Now, Peigra stood, never knowing how long it lasted, never realizing how many had fallen, never able to calculate how much of herself she gave to keep them all alive. But in the end, it was her very being that had been the reason she had been taken so young.

Peigra had a secret, a deep secret, that the apprentices, that Purda had hidden, that perhaps not even Berdel had known, and might never in either lifetime.

Something came out of the rift, something massive, and she took a breath, letting the magick find its targets, letting it know who needed her healing, and even with the sudden awareness, the fading of the heat, the pain beneath her feet, it was not over. In the middle of it all, the fallen waited, and Peigra looked to them, dazed, barely aware of what she was doing. Whatever it was, it drove at them as a wave, and took out several of them with one smash of what might have been a hand, and down they went. The roar of those behind as they charged was a wave of noise and motion, and she watched it with the same dispassion as the magick did.

It was over before there was a moment to wonder if it was finally gone, and the hissing rose, a sealing noise that was the most wonderful noise that could be heard, and there was nothing, nothing but the crumbling remains beneath their feet, the craggy outcroppings slowly crumbling, their dust to become part of the very sand around them.

She had done it as a child, with two foals who had been born oddly, and Purda had been witness to it, and had kept the secret, while Berdel had been on a rare trip away to another farm. Peigra concentrated, staring at the fallen, and began feeling the heat within herself, the thing that made her a living thing.

The one body came first, without recognition, one moment lying there, the next it clutched at nothingness, a fist rising up where it had been limp against the craggy remnants of the rift. One was up, another, and another. The magick chose who it could return and who needed to remain, and Peigra had yet to be in a battle where anyone had been left behind, save the most deeply wounded, whose recovery due to decapitation or dismemberment was impossible to recover from.

And even then, not everyone who came back with her magick would be whole again, because Peigra’s magick enabled her to tap into the forbidden realms, to overcome the death and shadows, and bring fallen back, if they could be gotten in time, before the very element of life within their bodies faded completely. It had to be done quickly, and often, healers were rotated, some on the battlefield, some kept in reserve due to the great extention of magicks that were necessary. What the magick gave, it also took, and deeply, not just in memories, but in exhaustion that wore down to the bones.

Those with the magicks to raise the dead were kept in the highest regard, and the most necessity, and that small group was always the one whose skills were utilized the greatest, and whose failures were often the reason their rate of suicide was the highest of all those who fought against the evils that had come to Telara.

There had been four of them, and their wounds were not so great that they could not be brought back, and done quickly, but usually, there were others who could share the load, others who chose, so that no one healer would be focused on bringing all the dead back. She had done it in the past, but not so quickly, and not so desperately, and there had always been others there to step in when she fell, for she knew she would fall, as they all would.

What a healer gave, the magick could also take, and it would, eventually. The reason there were always a great many healers was that, one by one, they would have to be replaced, not for the deaths on the battlefield or the constant torments of the dead as they tried to sleep, but for the exhaustion that came from the very bones that supported them. The magick, leeched from them, demanded rest, demanded recovery, and to do that, it required sleep, a sleep that only it knew for how long.

On the sands, staring at the ones who were rising, to the faces staring at her, Peigra gave a choking noise, and looked, finally, to what was supporting her. Rira’s staff, how it had come to her, she did not remember, nor did she remember falling, collapsing down to the sand, pebbles and sand and dust coating her as her legs gave out. Baltik came crashing to her, leaping folk and his noise sending people shrieking away from him.

She fell, reaching up to him, and felt his nose, lowering, touching her as she fell, begging him to be there when she woke. He had no hands to support her, no blanket to protect her from the sun’s fire, as she had come from the caves without any protection but the thin garments she had gone into it wearing. She would be sunburned for some time on her head, as her coronet of braids had come loose.

Baltik went down with her, beside her, curling around her as best he could, protecting his rider, as she had protected him in the Before. It was all he could do, lying there on the sand, beside her, careful with his hooves as he nested them beneath Peigra’s head, giving her something other than sand to curl against.

The great black head that rested against her leg, the eyes with their odd intelligence that looked to the Bahmi around, they waited, they were patient, but they also guarded. He had been an oddity, a great conversation that coin and stories of legend had been passed about, but in the end, he was nothing more than a horse, but a special one, who had lived unlike many others.

He was patient, and lifted his head only when Rira and Nal were there, blinking despite the sun beating down on him, on his rider, fallen on the sands. Rira touched his nose, stroking it gently as she bent her head against his, and whispered something for him alone, and extended her hand. The honey ball in its palm was ignored, and Rira understood that and closed her hand.

Around them, a tent was being put up, to shelter Baltik and Peigra, water brought to clean what wounds could be seen on Peigra’s feet, and her swollen leg. Gar was there, through only he knew how, and sat with Nal, keeping watch. Rira brought her mat to the tent, and set it beside Peigra, and made certain Baltik was covered as well, even if he had not needed the blankets she put over him.

They kept vigil, as Peigra had in the Before, and they had not been able to do for her, but she had done for them.



“No one told you to break it.”

Peigra rolled her eyes again at that, and gave another sigh of irritation, and Rira swatted away another child trying to tickle Peigra’s toes above the wrappings. “I didn’t break it intentionally, Rira.”

“Baltik thinks otherwise.”

“Baltik’s probably put on seven pounds from all he’s being fed,” Peigra lamented, and Rira only gave a smile, patted Peigra’s head, and shooed the children away again, or attempted to. They seemed to be everywhere now that Peigra was stationary until her broken ankle healed properly.

Unlike many in the lands who could take magick easily for their wounds and ailments, Peigra’s body would not accept magick from others, and she was left to the passage of time to heal any wounds and breaks, which had made her a great asset and liability on the battlefields in Before, for her magick seemed endless, but its price if she was wounded was often feared. No one could afford to allow her to spend weeks recovering when her magicks were idle, as she would be waiting for her body to mend itself.

Rira and Nal had both taken turns with Peigra’s injuries, and no one had explained how they had gotten her back, only that Baltik had known when she could be moved, and not before that. Peigra had woken on her usual mat in Rira’s tent, though her leg wrapped tightly in clay and linen to keep it immobilized, and she had stared at it and frowned deeply. Inactivity, to anyone born not knowing what it was, let alone what it existed, was a great hole of depression that was not easily overcome.

The children came and went, eager to hear what had happened, and the children from Nal’s clan, who had come with him to chatter with Peigra, were openly eager to tell her all that had happened and keep her ears in constant use. There had been a discussion of keeping Peigra where she was, and allowing Nal’s clan to tend to her, but Baltik had nudged his nose beneath Peigra in a show that she needed to be moved, and she was draped over his back, and that was that, back to Rira’s tent she was to go.

Wrapped warmly, in upwards of four layers and a thick fur that someone had found somewhere, Peigra was made as comfortable as she could be, sitting on her mat and obviously frustrated at being off her feet for upwards of two months. It was not as if she was on the farm, with books to be read, bread to be kneaded, a table to be seated in front of, as the Bahmi had none of those in the outer clans. What little could be read were the missals that came from the messengers, and anything brought by request from other areas. If they had been closer to Fortune’s Shore, Peigra might have been able to access the libraries that were being amassed on the Ethians of old, but she was here, and unable to go to Fortune’s Shore, and it was left to the children and the clan to amuse her.

The children’s lessons began to take on a new facet, as Peigra gathered them in Rira’s tent, showed them which herbs she needed, and off they went, with strict instructions to bring an adult with them. Nal volunteered himself many times to go out with the children, and two hunters gave the children their swimming lessons in Peigra’s absence, but despite their attempts, the fact was that she was stuck until she could walk again and her ankle healed.

Depressing.

The single rift had been an oddity, in an area that did not see many of them, but they could come anywhere, and Peigra spoke what she could to those who were curious or to the warriors, who were now desperate to have any knowledge they could glean from her against their foe that might never return to that spot, that might reappear tomorrow. Her knowledge was now imperative to the safety of two clans, and any misgivings were shifted elsewhere, but not wholly silenced.

There were some who believed Peigra’s coming had brought the rift, and Rira and Nal tried to keep those voices away from the injured young woman, but children were children, and not always conscious of what they were parroting to her. Peigra could not blame them, as it did seem that suddenly they had not only a stranger who would inherit Rira’s position, but now this menace from above had found them and killed three of their best warriors. That five had been brought back from the dead was conveniently forgotten, but not for long when others silenced the grousers.

Rira did what she could to keep Peigra occupied, and the hunters and warriors were constantly trying to pick new ideas from her mind about the rifts. What she could tell them she did so as they would understand it, and tried to be patient when they needed it explained many times. They had not been in the Before, as she had, and did not know the hundreds of ways that one single attack could differ from all the other ones and turn the tide in either direction. Compared to these Bahmi, Peigra was now the elder hunter and they the children, and it upset her to try to explain to them how to go against something that might never come back, but that they would not prepare for for the rest of their lives.

It frightened her that she, the outsider, was now their greatest source of information on an enemy that announced itself as one of the most beautiful things Peigra had ever seen.

She always had a baby to cuddle, thanks to some unspoken agreement from Misadal, and despite that Peigra had not seen him physically, Gar had left some ‘lessons’ for her to complete, which were more than lessons and trials as she considered them. Rira said nothing of them, only inquiring if Peigra had completed them, and Misadal kept around the tent to give Peigra someone to talk to, who was neither interested in what dream she had had the night before, nor what was the best defense against another rift from the earthen realm.

Misadal also had a small collection of books that she had obtained through her now-dead husband, who had been a messenger, and often found himself in acquisition of parcels whose recipients were now deceased. Such items were supposed to go back to the sender, but often a sender would drop off their items at any waystation, and they were gone without a means to return the item, and assuming it reached its target.

Many of the books were the usual ones, written to glorify the fantastical adventures of some imaginary hero and their exploits through the lands. There were three that had some worth, histories of the Eth that Peigra had never really had a chance to delve into, as she was more curious of the mother she did not remember, and how her father had come into a relationship with a Mathosian to begin with.

The books helped her drift to sleep when she napped, for she was sleeping often, drugged by Rira’s herbs, and not pleased with being on the receiving end of the herbs, but with little choice. The elderlies welcomed her out to the hot springs, carried by one of the hunters or the warriors out, and left against a rock to chatter with the elderlies. They missed her tea, but she had no way of bringing a fresh pot with her now, so her company had to suffice.

The days passed, and the boredom grew, but there was little choice so it had to be endured, and she did what she could. Someone’s offer to take her to Nal’s clan, to be thanked for saving their warriors, was taken gratefully, and getting her on Baltik took some planning, even with his getting down on the sand to help her up. Banging her ankle would happen, no matter how she went, and Baltik was the best choice as he knew her injuries. Baltik carried her as gently as he could, and ensured that when she needed to be moved again three days later, he was just as cautious.

He earned himself a special treat from Rira, one of her herb-cakes that she made with honey and a bit of flour, and Baltik did not have to share it with anyone as he happily slurped it out of the small pan it had been pressed into.

Mostly, Peigra tried to ensure the boredom of being stuck in one spot and unable to move freely, and there was little else to do but nap and read and talk to Rira or the children. Everyone was understanding of the matter, and Peigra was currently the only one with an injury in the clan, and found herself often with several voices to keep her company.

Four months after her arrival at the clan, Xanik returned, dismayed at her injury but apparently Gar had caught him, and had sent several thick tomes for Peigra’s study, and two empty journals, where he wanted to know her dreams and thoughts, and they would discuss them when she went to his clan later in the year, if her ankle healed. That trip was delayed, as getting to his clan required more walking, they being a more nomadic clan than the others, with a large range that they wandered about.

Rira had not shared with Peigra her concern at the ankle’s break, and that it was not healing as quickly as it should have, nor were the locations of the injury easily discovered, and Misadal and some of the elderlies looked at it with great care. When she had fallen from the cave, apparently she had come down harder on the ankle than was first thought, but no one was certain of the extent of the break, only that there was one. Time was the only thing for it, and it would take time to heal, as it was not an arm that could be compensated for; walking on it too soon would be more disastrous.

Xanik’s scrolls from Purda also helped Peigra, and she saved them for the most boring times of the day, when her naps did not coincide with those of the rest of clan, and she was awake while everyone else slept, or cuddling a fretting baby so its mother could sleep.

The disgusted looks she gave her ankle were growing darker the longer she was inactive, and with little else to do but try to occupy herself mentally, as expected, her thoughts strayed to the Before. She had not been active in Meridian to know who she had known who had survived and returned as an Ascended, and assumed there would be some, for she had traveled quite extensively as a healer, and her luck at living as long as she had was also another matter for her survival.

Purda again mentioned the men who had come looking for her, who had returned, inquiring if Peigra was coming to visit, and Xanik had mentioned that Purda’s scrolls were several months old, as they were being delayed in transit for safety, but whose? Peigra could not remember anyone she had known in Meridian whom she had known long enough to offend, let alone make a long-term angst. Whoever they were, they had visited the farm at least three times, searching for Peigra, and she was concerned for her family now. When Xanik departed with the line of vaiyuu headed back for Meridian, she asked him verbally to inquire, if he could, how her family was doing, or to have Temur send someone to check on them.

Curiosity was growing as well as she mulled the matter in her mind. Had someone she had known from Before wanted to track her down, to discuss matters, to know if someone had survived, to hold her and know she was alive? Certainly Meridian had not cared for her when she had arrived, and she had been left to her own devices when Temur had sent her to Rira’s clan, and Peigra had to admit, she was happier now than if she had stayed in the city with the herbs. Xanik promised that he would return with herbs, and he and his men were gone, and the clan continued as it had, and Peigra was left with her scrolls, the tomes, and boredom still.

Her ankle would heal, she just hoped it would be soon.