| Night fell eagerly, as it usually did during the season of Kevarelle. A weak breeze flirted with the ashes of the dead, mingling them without regard to their former stations or sins in life. Seer coughed, sitting up in the same spot Dharin and Jenya had set her only a couple of hours before. Slowly she rose to her feet and carefully walked over to the coran’hai, where Jenya and Dharin sat, eating what would have been a late midday meal. "How long did I sleep," she asked, rubbing her eyes. "An hour or so. I would have roused you, but Dharin would have killed me if I’d bothered you while you were sleeping," Jenya grinned sideways at Dharin. "No matter," Seer sighed, resisting the urge to smile herself. The Then’kael’s concern was touching. She pulled a cushion near to Dharin without thinking about it, and sat. "Are we leaving tomorrow?" Dharin nodded. "Those kids shouldn’t stay here longer than they have to, and Jenya wants to find a safe place for Shorin to stay as well." The Mage nodded. "Forgive me if it isn’t my business, Jenya, but since when do you have a son?" Seer prided herself on being observant, and remembering small details, but nothing in her memory told her that Jenya had a child. "Since six years ago. His mother ran off with him when she found out I was working for the Acharya. She had left before Shorin was born, and I never knew where she was, until the day before yesterday. During cleanup, I found Shorin standing next to Serelle’s body, crying." Jenya spoke in a factual tone, oddly unemotional. "Oh,” Seer breathed. "I’m sorry." While sympathy wasn’t her best, or strongest quality, she was prepared to offer it to either Jenya or Dharin if they needed it. Jenya half laughed. "I’m not. I only wish I knew what she’d told the boy about us Cleansers. He barely looks at me. He makes faces at you, and he’s tried to kick Dharin more times than I can count." "How did you meet his mother, Jenya? And why didn’t we know about her?" Dharin had been Jenya’s friend for twenty-six years, since the day they were both born. There was very little about Jenya that Dharin did not know, and vice versa. Jenya grinned again, his teeth bared strangely in the pale light. "Remember the month-long mission in Delkenar? How I disappeared almost every night?" Dharin nodded. "Seer and I just thought you wanted time to be alone, since it was really the first time we’d all… well, it was the first time any of us had seen death in that magnitude." Delkenar had made these Lariian Fields look like a festival, with a few casualties from rowdy pickpockets. Jenya laughed loudly, "I’m not squeamish, Dharin. You should know that by now. No, I just saw this woman in the streets, and she was gorgeous. Troubled, the tortured soul type, you know? I had to follow her, because it’s my stupid instinct to make people smile when they just want to scream…" He trailed off. "Your Sun-Chylde heritage," Seer nodded. "Yeah. Anyways, we talked, and we got close, really fast. Too fast, I suppose. Neither Serelle nor myself were really thinking about the consequences of believing we were in love and the day before our convoy was scheduled to leave, she told me she was with child. Because we were idiots, we hadn’t talked about what I did for a living, or our pasts. We were young and thought the past didn’t matter. Stupid," Jenya muttered. "What happened?" Few things brought out Dharin’s curiosity this easily. "I asked her to come with me. I wanted to be responsible and help out… but she asked where I was going, and where I was from, and what I had done with my life and she began screaming at me about how it was people like me that had murdered her parents. Serelle left that night, and the next day our convoy left for Shivralliah." "And now she’s dead?" Seer's eyes clouded with sorrow. "That’s horrible, Jenya." Jenya only shrugged, staring into the globular coran’hai. "Don’t feel sorry for me. Do whatever else you want, but don’t pity me. Pity Serelle for being dead, or pity Shorin for being alive in this world, but I’ve made my own decisions in this life, and I am not sorry for them." Seer nodded. "I understand how you feel, Jenya. Regrets are for the weak, I suppose." Dharin laughed. "What would you know about regrets, Seer? Everything comes so easily to you." The glare he suffered from those emerald eyes made the night air seem glacial. "I know enough," she snapped. "I know enough to realize that I am tired of all the death. Tired enough to leave it, if it weren’t for the fact that walking away would mean that I would never see you again." She shuddered, relieved to have finally said the words that had long been weighing on her heart. "And then I would never have the strength to face the horrible things in my past, and I would die - weak, and alone." Dharin’s eyes widened slightly as Seer’s words caught him off guard, cutting into the armor he had forced around himself. "What does strength really count for? Why would you die so easily?" "I’m sorry you are so naïve, Dharin." Seer started to walk away, to attempt to gather her thoughts, but it was Jenya who stopped her, grabbing her arm gently. "Tell him, Seer. Waiting can’t make it any better." Jenya knew most of Seer’s past, the way she felt about following the Acharya’s orders, and how much she hated knowing that she turned children into orphans. Jenya knew so much more than anyone expected him to. She shook Jenya’s hand off, looking him in the eye sadly. She nodded. "All the death we have caused," she began. "The parents, the wives, the husbands I have killed," Tears flooded her eyes. "It is becoming too much. I hate this power, and it is trying to kill me. I have fought the power of the Jihann for ten long years, only because you have given me the strength to do so. But," her knees gave way under her, and she made no effort to get back to her feet. "It is not enough anymore. The Jihann is winning, and I cannot think of a reason to fight it anymore." Dharin was silent for a moment, absorbing all of the pain from Seer’s words. "The Jihann is killing you?" He asked softly. Seer nodded. "All Magi eventually die because of their Jihann. The Svearin cannot figure out why, not that they have the means to perform adequate research, but it begins to take over. The power becomes too much, and the Mage finally gives up, and their bodies themselves become a Jihann. Trinlayra, the graveyard city, is full of these fallen Magi, their bodies turned to precious gems or nearly worthless stones. On some, you can still see their organs, and there was a pregnant Mage -" Seer fell silent, a tear falling to the ground. "It is a slow, painful death, I have been told. But I am starting to look forward to it." "Seer," Jenya started. "Finish." "Don’t worry, I’ll tell him," she sighed sorrowfully. "This makes me feel so childish, weeping about how I long for death." Angrily, she stood, and made her way to a cushion. Jenya returned to his own seat, knowing the words that had to come next. Seer took a shallow breath. "My family is dead because of me." "What?" The word barely made it out of Dharin’s mouth. His family had been the most precious thing in his life, before they died and he left for Shanra to serve the Acharya. It was a statement he could not really understand. "I was ten years old when the Acharya found me by a shallow pool of poisoned water. Nearly every bone in my body was broken; I was feverish and close to bleeding to death." She paused, trying to locate the flask of Qu’elba she kept in her robes. With it, maybe the words would be easier. "What had happened to you?" Dharin put a hand on her shoulder, and she squeaked, startled by the visions. Dharin moved his hand, remembering how much the peeks into worlds that were not this one hurt Seer. "That time, it was my two brothers that had beaten me. They had decided, along with my sisters that since I was too weak to do any useful work that I was only taking, and not giving anything back. Before that, the beatings weren’t so bad, my mother and father usually took care not to break anything. But my siblings weren’t that nice, and they left me by the Rotting Pool to die. I don’t know how he found me, but Acharya just happened to walk by. He took me to his home in Srel’kai, and healed me. He said he sensed power in me, but that something was blocking it from manifesting. Days passed, and he decided that something was my family. He promised me power if I could remove the block, and -" she fell silent, not even daring to look Dharin in the eye. "That is what I know about regret." Though they had abused her, vocally or physically every day of her life, they had still been the only family she had known. She stood, and went for a slow walk, far away from the convoy. She stared at her stars, angrily, accusingly. The Seer had long ago accepted that this was her fate, to serve the Acharya, but now she began to question it. The dreams of other worlds, worlds where a graveyard city did not exist, where children did not have to understand that people died and were allowed to simply play and be innocent; these dreams had begun to whisper that something in this world was cruelly wrong. Dharin began to follow her, but Jenya held him back. "Leave her for now. You need to deal with this." Dharin jerked free from Jenya’s grip, and stomped to his cart, angry at Jenya and Seer for not telling him sooner, angry at the past for being what it was, and angry at himself for not wanting to face it alone. |