Age of Swords (The Legends of the First Empire #2)

“Sheen hath wee hove bragen groom,” Arion sang. “Sheen hath wee hove reen, breen, froom. Sheen ahwee, hath elochments hee. Sheen ahwee hath grooms fram thee. That’s the weave that I used to break Mawyndul?’s control on the people in your dahl. It’s what Miralyith call a ‘dampener.’ It severs an Artist’s power from the source.” She looked at Persephone and added, “Like tripping someone who’s trying to run. You break their connection to the ground, so to speak.” She said all this in Fhrey, and Persephone translated as best she could—leaving out the gibberish words which weren’t any language that she could tell.


“So these markings are the language of the Fhrey?” Brin asked.

Arion shook her head. “Language of Creation.”

“It’s the song of birds,” Suri said. “The sound of wind, and rain, and rivers, the flap of wings, the rustle of grass. It’s the voice of trees.” She said this last bit looking hard at Persephone.

“What you’re talking about, this recording of sounds, is…” Arion hesitated. “We call it ryeteen.”

“Wri…ting,” Brin mimicked her.

“Close enough. Useful for sending short messages long distances by bird.”

Brin’s eyes went wide. “You can do that? Can you understand this?”

Brin handed her the wrappings that had once bound the Fhrey’s head. Arion studied the markings and frowned. “These aren’t words. Not Fhrey words. But the sounds you made, the pattern, the rhythm…that was the Art. I never knew it could be painted. But the markings representing a blocking weave makes sense, as that’s exactly what the bandages did to me.”

“Do the sounds have meanings?” Brin asked. “Are they like words? Can they be translated?”

Arion and Suri both nodded. “In a way, sure. They are ideas after all.” She spoke to Suri in Fhrey for a moment, asking how to say a few words. Then she softly sang in the same rhythm but using Rhunic words:

“Shut the way of hidden power.

Shut the way of rock, beast, flower.

Shut away, the elements be.

Shut away the powers from thee.”





“It says all that on the cloth?” Moya asked, astounded.

“More than that,” Brin said. She had followed along on the bandages with her finger as Arion sang. “There’s more here.” The girl laid the bandages across her lap. “So the Fhrey can mark words on cloth?”

“Some can, yes.”

“Do they, um, ‘write’ stories?”

“Stories?” Arion shook her head. “No. As I understand it, markings are simple things with a limited number of words. In Erivan, those that ryte are called scrybes. They use the markings to…” She hesitated, conferred in whispers with Suri, and then continued, “Keep lists, issue simple orders, and send short reports. It takes a long time to learn. Few understand markings. Stories would be pointless.”

Brin seemed to want more from the Miralyith, but Arion was showing signs of fatigue. She grimaced as if she might vomit; then she moaned and laid her head back down. The ship rose and fell across the swells, and Arion moaned again.

“How much longer?” Persephone asked.

“We should arrive before dark,” Frost replied.

“Thank you, Ferrol,” Arion whispered three times to her knees.

“Where are your chain shirts?” Moya asked the Dherg.

Frost wasn’t wearing his anymore. None of the three were. They had taken the garments off the moment they came aboard. Given how heavy they looked, Persephone guessed this was to avoid drowning should they fall overboard.

Frost grumbled something.

“Traded them for passage.” Rain spoke again. He was working on the mattock-bladed end of his pick, honing it to a bright edge.

“It cost that much to be ferried across to Neith?” Persephone asked.

“With her it does.” Flood nodded toward Arion.

“The rest of you didn’t come cheap, either,” Frost said. “Dent is a scoundrel.”

The ship continued its roll and pitch, and Persephone looked for something else to count—anything to keep her mind from thinking about her stomach. Her sight settled on Roan, who was winding the length of a string around the center of her long stick. Persephone assumed Roan planned to use it as a staff since it was nearly as tall as she was. But Roan had whittled it so that it tapered at both ends and had a flattened shape everywhere except in the middle, where she was wrapping the string.

“What’s that, Roan?” Persephone asked.

“It’s a bow, like for starting fires, but this one isn’t.”

“Isn’t what?”

“For starting fires.”

“Huh?”

Roan thought a moment. “I got the idea for the wheel when I saw Gifford’s pottery table. And I got the idea for this bow when I saw Habet starting a fire.”

“But it isn’t for starting a fire?”

“No.”

“What is it for then, Roan?” Moya asked with a bit of irritation in her voice.

“Throwing things.”

“Like what?”

“Remember when you were trying out that little spear, and it didn’t go too far?” Roan picked up one of the shorter sticks she had in her sack. They were all very straight. and Persephone wondered how she made them so uniform.

“Uh-huh.” Moya nodded.

Roan took out a thicker string, tied it on one end of the long staff, and then bent the shaft into a bow and looped the other end of the string around the opposite end. She gave the taut string a flick of her finger and listened to it ring with the vibration.

They all watched as she stood up, fitted one of the small sticks that had a notch, and pulled back. She pointed the stick out toward the water and let go. The string twanged and the force threw the stick. It shot out at a blinding speed, then spun sideways and fell into the sea.

Several of the sailors glared at them, and Dent, the dwarf with the nose ring, stomped across the deck to shout loudly at Frost and Flood.

“Don’t do that again,” Flood said after Dent left. “They don’t like magic.”

“It’s not magic,” Roan said.

Frost and Flood looked at each other skeptically. “What do you call it when a little one like you can toss a stick so far?”

Roan shrugged, and all she said in her defense was, “It will go farther once I weight the front with a stone or metal point, the way the javelin was weighted. A lot farther. Straighter, too.”

Moya was looking out at the water in the direction the stick had flown. “If you put a point on that like a javelin, and made it fly straight…” She looked back at Roan abruptly and never finished her sentence, but there was an odd expression on her face, as if she was both excited and terrified.

—

They caught their first glimpse of Belgreig in the light of the setting sun, through a curtain of windblown rain. A gray jagged line crossed the horizon, growing higher and darker with each passing minute. Even at a distance of miles, the landscape appeared no friendlier than the sailors, and as the sun drowned in the sea, the land became a black silhouette of serrated teeth.

Persephone stood on the rainy deck, holding on to one of the million ropes to keep from falling as the ship rocked harder than ever. Soggy and dripping, they clutched bags and blankets, each longing to be free of the ship, but they were all uncertain about trading that miserable spot near the bow for the craggy shore.