Blood of War (11 page)

“Be open Jurel. You have difficult conclusions to reach but you must remain prepared to accept them.”

Alone once again, Jurel lost himself in his thoughts for a short time before deciding he should try to get back to the Abbey. There was no doubt that Metana would have...
words
for him when he returned but there seemed no help for it.

With a sigh, he concentrated and found the pin-prick of light that was apart from his source. He felt a wrenching tug, a disorienting sense of displacement.

The grasses of his field, his place, were empty; the only residual evidence that anyone had been there was the trampled grass where Jurel and Maora had stood and talked. And soon, even those grasses sprang back up, leaving no trace that anyone had ever been there.

Though there remained a sense in the empty air, a feeling, as of a pent breath, of waiting.

Chapter 9

As the winds of autumn cooled and became laden with winter ice and snow, a deep melancholy began to infuse Jurel's soul. At first, he ascribed this new sadness to exhaustion caused by his schedule. Metana worked him harder than ever, heaping work on work until most nights he did not sleep at all so that he could complete all the assigned tasks she had set him.

This new schedule had begun upon his return from his place. She had been apoplectic, demanding to know what had happened and where he had gone. Jurel, feeling that his visit with Maora had been too personal to share, had answered her vaguely. So vaguely, in fact, that her apoplexy had grown to epic proportions.

And the homework list grew. He had not even been able to join in the New Year's festival.

He soon came to realize that his dolor had very little to do with his exhaustion. In fact, the heavy workload seemed to mitigate his melancholy as though entrenching himself in his textbooks and his papers helped him forget something...

And then he understood. The understanding was not pleasant. So much so, that for the first time since he had been handed over to Metana for his education, he purposely avoided her. He did not want her to see him weeping. It had been a year since he'd been exiled from his life and almost a year since he had witnessed Daved's murder. With his hectic workload, he had almost forgotten, had in fact barely thought of his foster father at all in the last few months.

He escaped to his secluded arbor located deep inside an unused section of the Abbey to think. Metana would make him pay full recompense for this transgression but at that moment he did not have the heart to care.

Leaning against the bole of his tree, he let his memories have free rein. Days spent in the fields under the sun working alongside his father; evenings spent studying history and geography as Daved knew them; the memories were a cool breeze over the simmering cauldron of his emotions. Even the upbraidings—and there had been many, he thought wryly—were now a cherished memory. The only memory he would not entertain, would not allow a chance to materialize, were the last ones he had. The ones from Threimes. Where everything changed.

At intervals, Jurel wept, chuckled quietly, or simply gazed wistfully at the foliage and the wild roses and lilacs without really seeing them. How his life had changed! In a little more than a year, he had gone from being an ignorant boy on a farm leading a near idyllic life—save for the constant minor torments Valik visited upon him—to being thrust onto the world stage, killing hundreds, and discovering that he was...a god? If it had not been for the apparently genuine visitations by Gaorla and Valsa and now Maora (he wondered if Shomra would be next) he would have discounted this whole business as the insane imaginings of a deranged mind. As it stood, he still had doubts. How could he—
he!
—be a god? How could a timid nobody from the back end of nowhere turn out to be one of the most powerful beings in creation? And if he was one of these powerful beings, then where was his power? Where was the power to topple mountains or set the sun to rising in the west? He could not even convince skeptics that he was who he was supposed to be let alone cause oceans to dry up.

Who was he? He was the God of War. Was he? Knowing was easy. It was accepting that was nearly impossible.

* * *

The westering sun was gilding the trees and the wall surrounding the arbor when he finally stirred and rose to his feet. Melancholia nibbled at him and he was feeling wistful and not quite substantial as though he was not fully in the world. Except for his belly which rumbled all too real protests. He had not eaten yet that day and his body was making him fully aware of that fact.

He made his way through the corridors of the Abbey, passing through uninhabited wings and into more populous sections until he properly got his bearings and headed for the dining hall. At that time of day, the hall was quite overflowing with denizens but when he sat at the end of a table, suddenly those closest to him all seemed to remember important engagements elsewhere and he found himself alone. Those that remained outside the void quietened until only an occasional whisper or clinking of cutlery could be heard. He did his best to ignore the surreptitious glances various people cast his way, intent instead on the trencher and cup of ale a young novice placed before him before hastily scuttling off as if afraid Jurel would chase him and bite him.

As he sat staring at his food and chewing mechanically, his mind continued to drift. The food at the Abbey was always well made and tasty but thoughts of Daved made enjoying his meal impossible. He sopped up beef gravy with his bread, and swallowed a mouthful of ale while he chewed. He sighed.

The main door of the hall bounced off the stone wall with a resounding boom. Startled, Jurel's eyes shot up and he saw standing in the door, her eyes full of fire, Metana, searching the hall.

Fantastic, he thought.

When her eyes caught his, her lips pinched and she raised one finger to point directly at him. With such power did she glare that it had almost a physical weight, like a slap, and Jurel flinched. She strode toward him, still pointing with one hand while her other was clenched into a fist at the end of a ramrod straight arm.

Knowing what was coming, and knowing there was no escape, Jurel rose and headed toward her.

“Do you have
any
idea how furious I am with you?” she growled, glaring lightning bolts at him.

She spun on her heal and stormed from the hall. He, not being completely without sense, knew that she expected him to follow. Which he did. With all the enthusiasm of a child expecting a whipping.

She spoke not one word until they reached their classroom. She held the door open for him, pointing at his chair. He sat. She slammed the door and stormed to her lectern.

He did not bother looking at her. In truth, he barely cared. She could rant and rave all she wanted and, for the first time, it did not matter to him. He had other things to occupy his thoughts.

Her hands were white-knuckled claws as she gripped the sides of her lectern; she continued to glare at him silently. Her breath rasped in and out of her nose as she tried to rein her anger, but still he did not pay much attention. The memories continued to wind through his mind and coil around his thoughts, constricting them, suffocating them. It was as though the overwhelming power of his recollections left him empty now. Left him cold.

“What did you think you were doing?”

It was barely more than a rasping whisper but it carried the force of an avalanche; Jurel, jerked back to the present, flinched.

“Do you think I'm here for the fun of it? Do you think I wake up before the crack of dawn champing at the bit to get here to try and pound a modicum of education into a boorish oaf of a pretender?” As her anger gained fervency, so too did her tone, until she was screeching. “I'm only doing this because I was expressly ordered to. I have other projects that I was working on. Things that actually
interest
me.

“And then, just when I start thinking you're actually starting to make progress you go and insult me by not even showing up. You overgrown, callous, selfish, unthinking...
oaf!
”

As her ire increased, his did too. As she screamed her last words, he shot up from his chair with enough force to send it skittering across the floor. He slammed his fists on his desk; it cracked and fell to the floor in two pieces. It was Metana's turn to flinch, the first time since he had met her that she had shown him any reaction other than annoyance or outright anger.

Trembling, Jurel managed to curb the first words that tried to leap from his tongue. But not by much. Instead, he took a deep breath, finding it did little to cool his seething rage.

“Since the first day I met you when you dragged me away from one of the very few friends I have as though I was a recalcitrant child, I have done my best to treat you with nothing but courtesy and respect. I have taken the work you shoveled at me and I did it all with a smile on my face. I sat here silently as you belittled me. I sat here and didn't complain even when you wouldn't let me enjoy the New Year's feast or even my own damned birthday.

“I don't know what I pulled you from but whatever it was, I didn't do it on purpose. I didn't ask for you. Hells, I didn't ask for
anyone
. And let me tell you something: whatever little pet projects you were working on that you were pulled away from, you cannot begin to compare your loss to mine. My entire
life
has been ripped out from under my feet. Everything I knew, everything I was is
gone!

“You asked what I thought I was doing today. You know what? I was mourning. My foster father, the man who rescued me when I was newly orphaned—I watched my parents murdered by Dakariin, by the way—from a battle torn city and raised me from childhood was himself murdered before my eyes nearly a year ago in Threimes.”

This, the actual saying of his troubles, finally had the effect of stemming his surging anger, dulling it and cooling it. It left him numb. It did not really help that for the first time since he had met her, she finally showed a trace of human empathy when her eyes softened. He did not need or want her pity.

He continued, “So if you want to think that me not showing up today was intended as an insult to you, then go ahead. I really don't care. What I needed was some time to pull myself together.

“As for who I am, or who I am supposed to be, I guess you would be one of the disbelievers. I understand. I've noticed that many here don't put much stock in Kurin's claims.” He smiled weakly as she snorted quietly. “Most days I don't really believe it myself. Except for what happened in Threimes, I can't seem to do anything I'm supposed to be able to.”

At that, Metana's brow drew down and she canted her head inquisitively. She spoke calmly and mildly. “What did happen in Threimes? There are rumors, but no one who knows will talk about it.”

Jurel still had no desire to discuss it. Like the others who had shared the experience with him, it still left the sour taste of horror at the back of his throat to even remember it. She was honestly curious though, expectant without expectation. He had the impression that she did not want to know for the sake of satisfying some base bloodlust and fuel the fires of vengeance like so many others but because she truly wanted to understand him a little better by knowing what he had gone through the previous spring.

As wind gusts rattled the rapidly darkening windows in their casements, Jurel slowly and quietly began to tell the tale, starting with the harrowing running battle and subsequent capture by Salma's platoon of Soldiers of God. He had intended to tell a heavily edited version, but as his account wore on, he found himself telling the whole thing, every painful detail. By the time his story petered to a halt, Jurel was panting as though he had run ten miles and tears were coursing unabashedly down his face. His sight was a blurred, dirty window onto a reality that was unrecognizable and undecipherable.

He had, during the course of his telling, retrieved his chair and now as he sat with his hands clasped between his knees, he felt warm arms envelop him. It made him weep all the harder as he felt a soft hand gently smoothing his hair.

“It's all right, Jurel,” she crooned. “I'm sorry. I didn't know. It's all right.”

And he wept all the harder.

* * *

In time, his weeping subsided to sniffles and the occasional hiccup. He was surprised to realize how drained he was. Not just emotionally—that, he would have expected—but physically as well. He was certain that if he could lie down and shut his eyes, he would sleep for days.

And a strange paradox: though he felt like he weighed a thousand pounds, he also felt like a huge weight had been lifted from his shoulders.

He was surprised, then—physical and mental exhaustion notwithstanding—to realize that he felt better. It was as though he had lanced a painful boil and was getting all the infection out. He smiled a genuine smile for the first time in weeks, perhaps months, as Metana disentangled herself and crouched to be at eye level with him. After a brief inspection of his features, she winced.

“You look like you fell off a mountain,” she said softly.

“I feel it,” he responded, chuckling.

She rose and stepped to her lectern. Jurel, not particularly interested in listening to any lectures, nonetheless settled in wondering what exactly he would do for a desk. But she stood silently for a moment, gazing down thoughtfully at the sheaf of parchment she had there. Then she nodded, apparently making a decision.

“Tell you what,” she said, turning to face him. “Tomorrow, you and I will go for a picnic in one of the arbors. I will still give a lesson, but it will not be here—like we have a choice; you have no desk, oaf.” The words did not sting; her eyes were soft, and she smiled gently. “Instead we'll be under the sun and I promise it won't be quite so arduous.”

He could not help it; he breathed a sigh of relief. She smiled wryly.

“Yes, yes. I think for today, there is nothing here for us. Let's get some sleep and meet here in the morning. Say one hour after sunrise?”