Blood Seed: Coin of Rulve Book One (3 page)

“I don’t know what you are,” she hissed. “Tell me how I should know, S’eft.”

It felt like black water closing over his head.

“And yet…” A thoughtful look came over her face, and he grasped at her words as if he were drowning. “You were put into the hands of Rulve from birth. Surely, Rulve can protect you.”

Rulve. The name hung in the air like a light. “Who is Rulve, Mama? Why does he have to protect me?”

At first he thought she would not answer, for her look grew distant. “Rulve is the One Who Summons,” she said. “The Creator who calls us.”

She was drifting away from him, and he had to get her back. “Tell me about him,” he urged.

It worked; she looked down at him. “Here in the land of Ullar,” she went on, “most people worship Ul the Lawgiver. But in At-Wysher, the villagers bow down before a stone they call Ele. Rulve is different from such gods and goddesses. Rulve isn’t a man or a woman, but a spirit: the great mystery that is both he and she. He is our father; she is our mother. He made all things, and she loves everything she made. He teaches us and she heals us. Where I was born, we speak to Rulve heart to heart.”

“Where is this place?”

“In a village far away, where I grew up. People come to be with Rulve in a great hall. A round window takes up most of the western wall. This window is made of jade, so when the sun shines through it, the whole place glows with a forest light.”

Her voice grew soft and dreamy. Now she was his real mother again, telling him a story. Sheft settled into her warmth to listen, and she put her arm around him. 

“Two open hands are carved into the bottom of the circle, big enough for a grown man to lie in. These are Rulve’s hands, which uphold the world.”

Her voice was like healoil, applied to an open wound. 

“In this hall they hold a ceremony for certain newborn babies. Afterward, the infants are bundled up and laid to sleep in Rulve’s great, green hands. And you know what?” She tipped his chin up to look at him, and her eyes were gentle. “They sleep untroubled through the night. So when they get older and have a nightmare, they remember how peacefully they slept in the hands of Rulve, and are not afraid.”

“I wish I could sleep there.”

His mother smiled at him. “Those who lie in those great palms can look up at the circle and read the words inscribed far above: ‘My life is in your hands.’ Some of the wise people believe this is what we should say to Rulve, but others say this is what Rulve says to us.”

He pulled away to look up at her. “That Rulve’s life is in our hands? How can that be?”

“Because she has no hands, no heart, but ours. He has ordained the world that way: that God and people need each other.”

He didn’t understand, but leaned against her once more. “We should go visit this place.”

“It’s very far away. But Rulve lives here too, and so every night you can think about sleeping in his hands.” She smiled down at him and ruffled his hair. “But now, little hayseed, I think you have chores to do.”

He gave her a quick hug and dashed out. It wasn’t until later that he realized she had not answered either of his burning questions: what was wrong with him, and why did Rulve have to protect him?

But he put these questions aside, and every night thought about sleeping in Rulve’s hands. Most of the time that worked, and the bad dreams came less often.

Except, in the middle of Acorn, he had a terrible one. It started with the tolling of a bell, much bigger than their dinner bell, and the sound caused his spirikai to clench with tension. The bell called him urgently, persistently, even worse than the voices. It thrummed in his head, in his whole body. A shadow dimmed the sun and descended upon him. He tried to run, but a huge claw twined around his waist and pinned his arms to his sides. Powerful bat-wings beat above his head. His feet left the ground.

“No!” he screamed. “No!”

His mother woke him, only her head and shoulders visible in the opening on the floor. His heart was pounding, and the T above his knee, although long healed, stung fiercely.

“Be silent!” she hissed. “You’ll wake Tarn.”

“Wings,” he cried. “They were taking me away!” Away from everything he knew, from everything that could keep him safe.

“Don’t be such a baby.” She pointed to a moth beating against the window. “That’s all it was. Now go to sleep.”

She disappeared down the ladder. The dream still vivid in his mind, Sheft rolled off his mattress and shooed the moth outside. The rest of the night, he fought to pull away from the tatters of a dream that felt as real as anything he had ever experienced.

Gradually, the horror of the nightmare of wings faded. The event itself seemed real; but, in some unaccountable way, he remembered it, felt it, as if it had happened to someone else. Maybe, the odd thought struck him, it happened to his imaginary friend: the boy whose name began with T. The dream left a residual feeling of desolation, as if it had permanently turned down a once-bright lantern in his mind.

He took on more and more work in the fieldhold, but when his chores were finished, he roamed the deadlands, a wilderness of purple lupines and yellow strawflowers that rolled league upon league to the east. He followed the long gullies filled with buttonbush and low trees, watched birds bring insects to their nestlings, or coaxed a mantis onto his hand, careful not to hurt its fragile arms. When he had to go into the village with his father, he never forgot what he looked like and as much as possible kept his silver gaze on the ground.

Time passed, and many moons shone through the window of his loft. They lingered on a sleeping boy of twelve, moved over the pale hair of a fifteen-year-old, and left in darkness a young man who was now eighteen.

It was late summer, in the month of Redstar, and Sheft and his only friend Etane headed down the track to the common field. They were old enough now to cut wheat there, and today would be their first time. Etane jaunted along, his sickle over his shoulder, his eyes lit with anticipation. But Sheft faced a situation much darker, and he flicked away images of steel points and curved blades. He had partially overcome his fear of sharp object—taking up wood-carving had helped—but they still made him uneasy.

“You’ll be fine,” Etane said. “Just take your usual spot on the very edge of the field. That way you’ll have—”

“Blades swinging at me from only one side. I know, Etane. It’s not like I haven’t cut wheat before.” But not in the common field, and not as the target of a dozen hostile stares.

“You don’t have to be here,” Etane said. “You could’ve stayed home.”

No I couldn’t
, Sheft thought. Even though village elders and their sons weren’t required to participate in the common harvests, he was determined not to excuse himself. If he were ever to hold his head up in the village, he couldn’t hide behind his father’s status nor indulge his own fears.

He shared none of this with Etane, only said, “It would cause too much resentment if the sons of elders never showed up. And you can’t fool me with that ‘poor me’ attitude. You’ve been looking forward to this for weeks. It gives you a chance to show off your muscles to the girls.”

“Darn right. Give ‘em something to brighten their day.”

Ever since that time at Cloor’s, Sheft had always been wary around hoes, sickles and scythes. He noted where they lay in the field lest he step on one, always removed them carefully from their hooks in the barn, and hung them up the same way. He stacked them with the wooden handles facing him in the cart so he could pull them out without leaning over the lethal metal. He filed away rough edges on the wagon seat, pounded nails flat, and took on even more arduous tasks to avoid chopping wood.

Certainly, over the years, there had been minor accidents, but he’d learned to use the power of ice to prevent his blood from falling to the ground. He was far from certain, however, that he could summon ice with so many villagers watching.

It took effort to constrict his solar plexus, the spot just beneath his ribs that his mother called his spirikai. It took concentration to pull the inner knot so tight that what he had come to know as ice would race to the cut and freeze his blood. And then he’d have to deal with the inevitable reaction afterward.

With this secret fear heavy in his chest, he arrived with Etane at the common field. It lay between the road and the Meera River to the west and pasture to the east and had been planted last fall with winter wheat. Now it swayed with ripe seed-heads ready to be cut. Gwin, the blacksmith’s son, gave Sheft a murderous glance as he passed him in the field, but said nothing.

Dreading the moment when sickles would start swinging all around him, he stood tensely. At the headman’s whistle, it began. The reapers sliced the stalks about two hands below the ripe grain-heads, leaving the rest to be cut the next day for straw. Behind them, young women and boys gathered up the grain, bound it, and loaded it into the wagons. One them was hitched to Surilla, the big mare that belonged to Etane’s father, Moro.

Etane worked the swath next to him, with Gwin and the others beyond. It was hard, wrist-straining work, and the day was hot. The men soon removed their shirts, and Sheft tied his around his waist by the sleeves. As he cut, wheat chaff flew everywhere and stuck to his sweaty face and chest. He grew thirsty as the morning passed, but none of the village girls who went about with jugs of water came near him, so he had to go to the wagon to get a drink for himself. This made him fall behind the other reapers when he returned to work. Some of the younger boys, including Gwin’s half-brother Oris, soon grew tired of gathering and ran about, shrieking, at their games. All this movement and noise, plus the pressure to catch up with the others, made it harder for him to concentrate. 

Just before noon, he stopped to wipe the sweat out of his eyes and stretch his back. Heat shimmered over the next field where a flock of small birds wheeled and issued piping cries. They flashed white as they all turned together, as if they were gesturing to him, and flew toward the Riftwood. A sense of unreality filtered over him, a shiver of portent. Time slowed, and the sounds around him fell into silence. He raised his eyes to the haze beyond the Meera River.

A wind was gathering, from an unseen source between earth and sky. It was the great wind that tossed the seas and stirred up the clouds. It came, shaking the trees of the primeval Riftwood and surging across the Meera River. The fields of wheat bowed before its passage as it swept toward him. Panicked, he threw up a hand to ward it off.

It whirled around him, but it was more than wind. It was a vast being who heard the cries of a suffering people, a compassionate force that felt the slow dying of their land. Heavy with pain it could not relieve, it sighed and diminished itself into a breeze. It curled around him, breathed on him, and brushed over his hair like a bird-wing. “S’eft,” it whispered. “Please come. Come as soon as you can.”

He dropped his hand. His whole being reached out, and he leaned into the breeze.
I want to come. I will.

For several heartbeats the yearning filled him, the compassion pulled at him, then it all drained away.

He took a breath. What just happened?

An inner warning jangled. Still half-wrapped in the gauze of the vision, he blinked. A series of glints were rushing toward him, a metal object flashing in the sun. A sickle spun through the air—
whish-whish-whish
—heading toward his chest. The grin of its blade sprang up huge before him. He lunged out, caught the handle, and in its downward arc the blade nicked his upper arm. Drops of red sprang out, hung motionless in the sun, then sank into the wheat stubble.

Blood welled on his arm, and a nightmare leaped into reality.

Immediately he squeezed his eyes closed, clenched his hands.
Stop bleeding, stop
bleeding!
He bore down on the inner knot, almost blacking out with the effort, and constricted his spirikai. Out of its intricate coils, ice rushed into his veins, up his chest, across his shoulders, down his arms. He shoved it into the wound and froze it. But he had summoned too much and now stood encased. He couldn’t move his fingers, couldn’t even feel them. It was exactly as it had been that night when he was a six-year-old standing inches away from the Groper, frozen with fear. His eyes flew open. The glistening red was retreating into the cut. Even as he stared, it disappeared.

Then everything was happening at once and too fast. Etane was shouting, and Gwin was shouting back. “An accident! The damn thing slipped out of my hands!”

Nearby cutters straightened up and craned their necks to see what was going on. Sheft looked down at the sickle he so impossibly caught. His blood stained the blade. Numb, he wiped it clean on the sweat-cloth at his belt and then dropped it with a clang next to his own. Now ice-reaction was spreading through him, making him light-headed, fuzzing his thoughts, fumbling his fingers as he bound up his arm with the sweat-cloth.

The drops. The flying red drops. Some must have soaked into the ground. His stomach turned over.

He kicked the sickles aside, and his eyes darted over the soil. There—oh God—an area writhing with roots. With incredible swiftness green stems whipped up. They burst open and spewed out leaves. Horrified, he did just what his father had done that day in Seed: stomped on them, ground them under his heel. There, another one, and another. Frantic, he obliterated them too and looked for more. Grotesque, impossible, they grew from his blood, had their roots in his veins, marked him as something inhuman.

“The hayseed’s havin’ a fit!” a voice exclaimed. “By Ele’s eyes, the foreigner’s havin’ a fit!”

He drew a deep shuddering breath, and everywhere people were rushing toward him, exclaiming and questioning.

“What happened?”

“He
caught
it?”

“That’s impossible!”

“It could have killed him!” 

A muttered “Too bad it didn’t,” followed by laughter.  

Etane grabbed his arm. “Are you all right?”

Sheft forced words through cold lips. “Yes. A graze. It’s fine.” Maintaining the ice in his arm, he retrieved the sickle and ran his eyes across the base of the pale stalks. He could see no greenery. Back by the wagons, the bell jangled for the noon meal and the workers drifted away. He straightened.

Etane looked at him intently. “Are you sure you’re all right?”

Sheft nodded, his heart thudding. Ice had done its work, but now came the aftermath.

“Let’s take a look,” Etane said.

He reached for the sweat-cloth, but Sheft pulled away. He didn’t want Etane to see there’d be more blood on the outside, where he wiped his sickle, than on the inside. “I said it’s all right.”

“That was no accident. Gwin’s been reaping for years now, and sickles don’t just fly out of his hands.”

“He’d say it’s hot,” Sheft said, through chattering teeth. “He’d say his hands were sweating.”

“Are you shivering?” Etane asked incredulously.

“It’s just reaction. It’ll stop.”

“Come on then. Let’s get something to eat.”

“I think I’ll just—just find a spot in the shade.”

Etane moved off. First glancing around to make sure everyone had gone to the wagons, Sheft knelt on knees that barely held him up and once more searched the ground. The sun seemed too bright and the stalks shimmered before his eyes, but he found no more of the plants pushing through the soil. He climbed unsteadily to his feet and headed for the shade of the nearest tree.

Etane joined him there. “I brought you this.”

“Thanks.” Sheft gulped down the water, but the sight of the bread and cheese made him feel slightly sick.

Etane wolfed down his lunch, then looked up as two village girls called to him. With a sheepish grin at Sheft, he went. 

Under a haze of ice reaction, Sheft watched the girls flirt with Etane. All smiles and dimples, they tossed their long hair and cast bright glances at him. 

No young woman ever looked at him like that. Still trembling inside, he rested his arms on his drawn-up knees and stared at the ground.

The confidence he had built up over the years was gone. For over a decade, ever since he discovered his power of ice, he’d practiced summoning it. It started when he learned that the Groper was seldom seen in the dead of winter because the creature seemed to be repelled by extreme cold. Then he remembered his icy terror on the night he’d first encountered it, remembered how his half-physical, half-mental reaction had produced the ice that had saved his life. He’d learned a way to re-create it.

At first, the necessity of re-living the terror of that night and the effort of constricting his spirikai resulted in pounding headaches and constant nightmares. But it stopped the bleeding. He became skilled in the use of ice, and no drop of his blood ever reached the ground. He thought he’d succeeded, thought he’d never bleed again, thought he’d avoid making a spectacle of himself in front of others.

But he’d been wrong. 

The sound of the headman’s whistle got everyone to their feet. The reapers stood, stretched, and headed toward their swaths. He took several deep breaths, trying to dispel the light-headedness; but before he could stand, Gwin sauntered over with Voy, snatching up his sickle on the way. Gwin’s muscular arms hung in arcs at his sides. Two lines between his eyebrows gave him a concerned look, as if he recognized a painful problem and regretted the measures needed to solve it.

Voy stood beside him like an inseparable shadow; slyness, as opposed to Gwin’s intelligence, glinted in his ferret’s eyes. “Too bad,” he said, “you got hurt today. Too bad if it happens again.”

As it had happened before.

#   #   #

After that first disastrous visit to the village when he was six, Sheft had become determined to find a friend. He’d asked his father to drop him off at a low place just south of the village, where children often gathered to play by the mill. Watching his father’s wagon disappear down the road, he hoped Tarn would remember to pick him up on his way back from the council meeting.

Six or seven children stopped their games and stared as he scrambled down the embankment. As he came closer, one of them yelped and ran off. It must be his eyes, he thought, his horrible fish’s eyes, so he averted them. “Can I play with you?”

“If you can keep up with us, straw-head,” one boy answered. He ran off, and the crowd of children followed. 

Sheft did keep up. He climbed the tree even higher than they did, walked the log without falling off, and was winning the race beside the river. Until he slipped and skinned his knee.

Instantly the warning screamed in his mind, and the ground reared up before him. Terrified he’d be unable to stop the blood from falling and the disgusting roots sprouting, he pulled the spirikai knot too tight and summoned too much ice. Half-blind, he stiffened with cold, while the other children gaped at him.

“Look!” one shouted. “A demon’s got him!”