Both Dreads were sitting outside their cottages, by the open fire pit. The Young Dread was dressed for battle, her whipsword and several knives arrayed along her waistband, her hair tied up inside a leather helmet. She was sharpening a long dagger with a whetstone by the light of the fire, her hands moving up the blade with steady, rhythmic precision. The orange firelight danced over her face, casting dark shadows around her eyes. Across from her, the Big Dread was putting oil to his own knife and chanting words to the young one, his voice as cold and hard as the blade in his hand. When he paused, the Young Dread would chant an answer.
Neither moved as they spoke, but as John and Briac went by, both Dreads’ eyes followed them for a few moments. It sent a shiver up John’s back.
They passed the third Dread cottage, empty and silent, and then they were away from the woods, walking across the meadow toward the dairy barn and stables. Even as he fought to keep his emotions in check, John felt a tingling of alarm. He knew now where they were headed. Briac’s hand once again found John’s neck, pushing him on.
“Briac, I will take my oath. I must take my oath.”
“There is no ‘must,’ John. There is only failure or success. You have failed.”
Those three words hit him like a blow to the gut. Until he’d heard the word “failed,” he had held out hope that Briac would be fair, that he would keep his promises and finish John’s training.
“I am the strongest apprentice,” he said quietly. “You know I am.”
“That you are,” Briac agreed. “A strong fighter. Also a distracted fighter, an emotional fighter. Both deadly for a Seeker, to you and your companions.”
They passed the stone stables, where John could hear the whickering of the horses, comfortable in their stalls. For a fleeting moment he imagined that Briac would take him in there and ask him for another show of his horsemanship. But they did not stop at the stables.
They passed the dairy barn with its special stink, unpleasant and yet friendly somehow. Briac continued to walk, his hand now a force at John’s back. Their destination was a structure with a very different feel.
Ahead of them lay the old barn. Half its roof had fallen in, but the back half of the building was still intact. From a window high up in the wall in the remaining half, a weak light spilled out into the dusk, a light tinged with metallic blue.
John stopped. Briac’s hand pressed more firmly on his back. But John would not move.
“I don’t want to go,” he said.
“We are going.”
“I’ve seen it.”
“And you will see it again.”
“No.” John hated the childish sound of his own voice, but Briac knew exactly how to make him feel helpless. Whatever the circumstance, you must control it. His mother had told him that. He must find a way to gain control again.
Briac took his hand from John’s back and walked on ahead of him. “You may leave if you wish, but you will never learn what I have to say to you.”
John stood there for a full minute, watching Briac grow fainter in the gathering darkness. He spent most of his days on the estate trying to forget what was in that barn. But it was there, whether he avoided it or not. Still, his feet did not want to move forward. His whole body longed to turn around and run. Finally, he hurried to catch up just as Briac was unlocking the barn door.
Inside, starlight came in through the collapsed half of the roof, providing just enough illumination for them to find their way. From the shadowy corners came the smells of old straw and wild weeds and rodents—smells he remembered from the last time he’d entered this place.
On the other side of the barn, a modern room had been built. It looked like a giant child’s building block shoved inside a larger and older toy. This room’s walls were smooth concrete, framing a large steel door. The two men crossed the barn, and John watched Briac enter numbers on a keypad. The steel door clicked open.
Briac gestured for John to enter first. As he stepped over the threshold, a hospital smell hit his nose, a mixture of disinfectants and decaying flesh. The weak blue light he’d seen from outside came from a bank of medical machinery stacked beneath the room’s lone window, set high up in one wall.
A figure lay on the bed in the center of the room, too hard to make out in the dim light, except for a halo of sparks floating around its head and torso, flashing faintly in different colors. Years ago, when John had first been here, those sparks had been brighter, hadn’t they?
When Briac switched on the overhead light, John’s instinct was to close his eyes, but he forced himself to look. The figure on the bed appeared dead. The IV tubes and machinery, however, told a different story: the skeletal shape lying before him was alive, if only technically.
John’s throat constricted. The figure’s gender and age were impossible to tell, and the flesh seemed withered by sources other than time. The hair was gray and patchy; much of it had fallen out. The bones showed through the skin, and though the muscles had disappeared almost completely, they had pulled the body’s joints into awkward positions. The face was especially skeletal, with sunken flesh and a prominent jawbone. Beneath the head, an old and unwashed hospital gown gave the figure a measure of privacy.
Briac said nothing for a while, forcing John to study the body. In the brighter light, the sparks were hard to see, so that John continuously felt his eyes were playing tricks on him, an effect that left him dizzy and sick to his stomach. He remembered being seven years old and seeing a web of bright flashes like tiny electrical explosions before he closed his eyes tight. Repay them for this…
“This is a Seeker who met a disruptor field,” Briac said, interrupting John’s thoughts. “Is this a pretty sight to you?”
“No.”
“This body has been here for years.”
“You’ve shown me before. You know you have. You’ve shown all of us.” John fought to control his voice. Briac clearly took pleasure in displaying this tortured creature.
“Yes. I keep it for apprentices. A Seeker should know what he’s dealing with before he takes his oath.”
John felt disgust at Briac’s self-righteous tone. “If you want your apprentices to know what they’re dealing with,” he said, “you should tell them what Seekers do after they take their oath.”
Briac ignored this. “You ask for access to the most valuable possession of mankind without properly earning it. Even though this”—he gestured to the figure on the bed—“would be the consequence. For you, or for those who rely upon you. Like Quin.”
“I have earned it,” John spat. “I can earn it. You’re simply pretending I can’t.”
“It takes some energy to keep this one alive,” Briac mused, again focusing John’s attention on the figure in the bed. “At first, there were unpleasant convulsions and twitches, when the muscles were still working, but that’s over now. It’s just the sparks, which are slowly fading. I have to feed a current of electricity through the body, besides the nutrients. Otherwise the sparks would drain the life out in a few days.”
Briac lifted one of the figure’s eyelids and stared down into the lifeless eye, which had lost whatever color it had once had, then let the eyelid fall closed.
“Stop feeding it,” John said. He tried to keep his voice even, but he could hear the pleading in his own words. “The dead should be allowed to die.”
“You find this inhumane?” Briac asked with false surprise. “This is an important training tool.”
John stared at the body—at the patchy hair, at the hospital gown. Just as he had years ago, when he’d first seen this horrible creature, he longed to slide up the hospital gown and look for the evidence he felt sure was there.
As if sensing his thoughts, Briac stepped between John and the bed. John’s eyes were drawn to Briac’s old leather boots with their heavy soles and metal tips, so out of place in this tidy medical setting. They were the boots of a man who’d done terrible things. John felt another wave of nausea.
He forced
his head up so his eyes met the older man’s.
“It’s a pity you didn’t die in the practice fight,” Briac said with a deadly soft voice. “That would have been convenient. No one could have blamed me.”
“You’re a beast,” John replied quietly. “What’s going to happen when Quin finds out what you are and what you expect her to be?”
“Am I a beast?” Briac asked, his voice even. “And you—so innocent?”
“You made a commitment. There were witnesses.”
“I owed you your training. I have trained you to the best of my ability. You were sixteen last month. A Seeker should be sworn by his fifteenth year.”
“I came to you late. I was older than Quin or Shinobu—”
“Not my concern.”
“I was a child. It took time to convince my grandfather it would be safe for me to come—”
“You’ve missed your chance.”
John stared at Briac. He’d struggled for years to hide his hatred. Now it came upon him so intensely, he was nearly paralyzed. That would not do. There will be many things that try to pull you from the path. Hatred is one…
Hatred. He was almost vibrating with it. Yet he spoke as calmly as he could: “That ‘valuable possession’ you’re always talking about—whose is it, Briac? Who does it belong to?”
Briac’s right hand shot out to slap John across the face, but John ducked aside, stepping closer to Briac.
“You should be helping me,” John said. “Quin and I will be married one day. You could make a truce with me now, restore relations between our houses, earn what you have taken unfairly. Before I have to—”
“You have no house, John,” Briac responded sharply, cutting him off. “I saw to that. You’re alone, and Quin will not be yours. An athame ends up with whom it belongs. In this case, that person is me.” They held each other’s eyes. “I told your grandfather you’ve failed, once and for all. He was very upset.” Briac delivered this final piece of bad news with obvious enjoyment. “He’s expecting you back home.”
A vast ocean of hopelessness began to rise around John. He had to get out before he was engulfed.
“Pack your things,” Briac said. “I’ll take you to the train tomorrow. Now go.”
John did, stalking out of the makeshift hospital room and the decaying barn. He paused outside the doorway, sucking in deep breaths of the crisp night air, filling his lungs like an athlete preparing for a sprint.
And then he ran.
The village of Corrickmore was quiet that evening, except for a few wandering fishermen too drunk to go home and too loud to stay in the pub. Their voices echoed off the houses facing the waterfront, and they were answered by residents throwing open windows and yelling for them to shut up before the police were called.
Shinobu and Alistair walked down the opposite side of the street, directly along the water. Their bellies were full of mutton-and-onion pie from the Friar’s Goat, the pub at the north end of town, and they were sharing a bottle of beer large enough for four or five ordinary men, and nearly large enough for Alistair.
“Mind you, not too much of the drink,” Alistair said as Shinobu tipped the bottle up. “We’ve got a full night ahead of us.” He clapped his son on the shoulder, causing Shinobu to spit a huge mouthful of beer all over his own shoes.
“Ah, take a wee bit more than that, Son,” his father told him, tilting the bottle up to Shinobu’s lips again. “And a bit more still.”
Shinobu shook his head and handed the bottle back. He wasn’t interested in beer, and he didn’t fancy getting his shoes any stickier than they already were. He danced up to his father like a boxer in a ring and pounded the older man’s stomach with his fists. This was very much like hitting Michelangelo’s statue of David; Alistair towered above him, and Shinobu was in more danger of hurting his fists than he was of hurting his father. Alistair only chuckled as he took a long swig of the beer.
“Tell me what we’re doing tonight, Da.” Shinobu was moving all around the big man now, landing a punch wherever possible.
“Cannae do that.”
They watched the fishermen, who had reached the corner and were getting louder as the final verse of their drinking song dissolved into chaos. Then one stumbled off home, leaving those remaining to argue their way through the first verse of something new.
“Don’t look unhappy, do they?” his father asked, running a hand through his red hair.
“Who, the fishermen?” Shinobu asked. “They’re drunk off their faces.”
“And we’re not?”
“I’m not. I’ve got work to do tonight.”
“Ye think work cannae be done drunk? Sometimes being drunk improves it,” Alistair said.
Shinobu smashed a fist playfully into his father’s gut. “Come on. Hit me back!” Alistair took a lazy swing at him, which Shinobu ducked easily. “Your son’s taking his oath tonight! You can do better than that.”
“Yon drunkards don’t look unhappy,” Alistair said thoughtfully as he took another swing at Shinobu.
Shinobu bobbed away from his father’s fist and looked at the three remaining fishermen, one of whom was now throwing up noisily into a public rubbish bin.
“They don’t know the secrets of the universe, maybe,” Alistair went on. “They’re not part of our special…club. Still, they have a good time.”
“Dad, one’s wiping his vomit on the other one’s shirt.” He punched his father’s shoulder with enough force to fell a lesser man.
“Oomph,” Alistair said, absorbing the shock. They both studied the fishermen more closely as another one retched onto the sidewalk. “Aye, maybe they’re a bit disgusting,” Alistair admitted.
He crossed the street and led Shinobu away from the waterfront, up a smaller road with rows of tidy brick houses.
“Mind you,” his father continued, making another attempt at whatever point he was trying to make, “those eejits are not the best example. But these houses here, they’re full of people. All sorts of people.”
“Dad, I’ve been here before, you know.”
“Aye, that I do know,” his father said with a smile. He tapped the side of his nose with one finger as though sharing a secret. “More than you let on.”
Corrickmore was the closest town to the estate, thirty miles away. And it was true, Shinobu had visited it on more occasions than he’d mentioned to his father. There were girls in the village. And girls, Shinobu had discovered early on, were quite happy with the way Shinobu looked (“like an Asian film star”), with the way he moved (“like a tiger”), with the way he spoke (“such a gentleman!”)—with everything about him, really.
“At any rate,” Alistair continued, taking another long drink of the beer, “a lot are happy. Even without all the special things you’ve been taught.”
Shinobu finally stopped dancing around his father and came to rest in front of him. He shoved hard on Alistair’s chest. It was like halting a locomotive, and Shinobu was pushed back a few paces before Alistair came to a stop.
“You think I’d be happier without the things I’ve learned?”
His father looked down at him, then away. “I’m not saying that. Not exactly.”
He stepped around Shinobu and continued walking. The town was quiet here, lit by a few streetlamps and the occasional glow of a television inside a house. The only noise was the water lapping against the pier a few blocks away. Alistair turned again, choosing another street.
“What I’m saying,” he continued, “is I’ve raised you on the estate, filled yer head with my world.” Alistair was not much of a talker. Shinobu could tell he was straining to pick the right words. “It’s natural you want to do what you’ve been taught, but…you have a choice, Son. Did I never tell you that?”
“I don’t need a choice, Da. I love it. The fighting, the way I use my mind. All the old stories.” He punched his father several times in the small of his back to make his point. Alistair hardly seemed to notice.
“It’s
not quite like those old stories anymore,” Alistair muttered. He was quiet for a moment, then: “Your mother liked to walk to town. Do you remember? She liked to see the outside world.”
“Of course I remember.”
Surprised at the change in topic, Shinobu stopped hitting his father and looked up to study his face. As a rule, Alistair did not mention Shinobu’s mother, Mariko. She’d been killed in a car accident seven years before. Shinobu’s memories of her were fading, but he clearly recalled certain things, like walking with her in the meadow on the estate while she explained to him what honor was. He remembered her very lovely Japanese face and her small stature—she’d looked like a doll next to his father. Even so, she’d always seemed just as strong as he was. Except near the end, when she was sick, just before the accident.
“Your mother didnae want you to spend yer whole life on the estate,” Alistair said.
“But I have spent my whole life on the estate. I’ve spent my whole life training to go There, Da. My whole life, and now I’m ready. Tonight we’re going together.”
Alistair stopped walking. He bent his shoulders so his eyes were level with Shinobu’s.
“It’s not There you have to worry about,” he said gently. “It’s where we go after.”
“Tell me.”
“I cannot. I wish I could, but I can’t.”
Alistair looked pained. He rubbed his face with his hands. They had stopped in front of a row house. The curtains were drawn, but they could see the shapes of a family moving inside, and there were kitchen noises: a kettle whistling, someone yelling that the biscuits were done.
“Do you recognize this place, Son?”
Shinobu surveyed the house, smiled. “A girl I know lives here.” He turned to his father, surprised. “How did you know?”
“I know a few things,” Alistair said. “Is she your girlfriend?”