Chapter 13 - Part I

"Close your eyes.  Raise your palms flat and forward."

Good.

Breathe.  Focus on that breath.  Start by counting.  1, 2, breathe in.  3, 4, breathe out, et, auj, breathe in, vok, kuth, breath out.  Then let go of the numbers."

He gently touched the tips of Vren's outstretched hands and she felt the warmth of his fingers permeate her own thin skin.  Warmth, and something else.  A steady beat vibrated through her being as well.  Could it be the beating of his heart?  The flow of his blood?  Or something else.

Yaj-Oth, a Yibouhese bei'thal, pulled his hand back, but the beat continued.

"I am simply making apparent what is already there.  I'm setting you in the right direction, handing you the leash.  What do you see?"

"I don't see anything.  My eyes are closed." 

He slapped her face for that.  "Now is not the time to play idiot, student." he said, but he was not angry.

Vren did not budge.  Instead, she reached out on her web, feeling the presence first of Yaj-Oth, and the 50 or so souls or half-souls throughout this side of the barracks.  They were in all directions, and aside from Yaj-Oth, none seemed to have purpose with her.  She struggled to find what he was looking for.

"The Silent Scholar warned me about this.  Clearly we need to beat it out of you." he resigned himself, drawing the nine-tails short whip from his belt with his powerful hand.  "But my promise to you as teacher is that I will break you of this.  You will be bei'thal yet."  He struck her bare back with enough force to visit her flesh in fresh bloody streaks, but not more.  The wounds broke open others from days past, but they went no further than that.

Vren cried out in pain, crouching her body away from the blow, and her focus lost not only her connection to her web, but to the beat radiating from her fingertips as well.

"Stop it!" she cried.  "Please."

"Why do you play your tricks when I give you the answer into your hands.  Try again student." He continued.

"Stand up straight.  Begin again."

Vren pulled her body and her mind back into focus, moving her attentions to the pains in her body and the frustrations of her mind, to the energy of the air around her.  Again, Yaj-Oth brushed her fingertips and again she felt the beat within her body.

"Focus.  Do not use your head.  The kennel husband does not philosophize with the dogs."

"He commands them to attention." she responded and Yaj-Oth rewarded her with a curt nod, though Vren could not see it.

So instead Vren followed the beat of her own heart and traced it to that of her fingertips, where that foreign rhythm flowed.  This time, she found the connection.  She followed the source of the beat, through the door, out the room and down the hall.  It snaked around a corner and through another door where it found its end - its origin.  Vren tugged.

Within seconds there was a knock at the training room door.  Vren opened her eyes.

"Good.  Good.  Now, command it to enter."

Vren cleared her throat and ordered with the most authority she could muster in a foreign tongue, "Enter bei."

The door opened and a young girl of perhaps 15 tides or so walked in.  She was beautiful, exotic and charismatic.  Vren could not tell where she came from, her skin was dark enough to be considered Nüish, but light enough that in the right lighting, she might be mistaken for Lithenese. Her eyes were round enough for any one of the known tribes of Benge, yet dark irises and a piercing glare could have her be Yibouhese just as easily.  Vren blinked, and when she looked again, she realized her assessment had been all wrong.  This girl was clearly a Nü.  She might be a hauntingly strange, if not beautiful child, but she had a strongness in her face Vren had grown up adoring.

"A bei'thal is not supposed to be tricked by their bei." Yaj-Oth berated, bemused.

Vren looked at the similarly shirtless man, clad only in breeches and leather bracers.  She shook her head and blinked her eyes again, trying to realign her mind through a symbolic physical gesture.  When she refocused on the child, she realized she was looking at a very strange, non-descript child, and a boy at that.

"This one is compromised of appearance.  We call that goa'bei.  Certain features of his face and body will be accentuated, depending on the preferences of the viewer.  He will never age until the day his body finally gives out and will need to be replaced."

"What was the cost?"

"I do not forge bei.  Ask another."

"Why did it have to be a child?"

Vren grimaced as she felt the whip at her back again.  Although it was light, the fresh wounds stung.  "You are asking the wrong question.  How might this bei be of use to the Empire?"

A thought popped in her mind.  An insidious thought.  She was afraid to suggest it, afraid she might be right.  She shook her head in disgust.

Yaj-Oth smiled.  "These are no longer human beings Vren.  Whatever they were, however their lives ended, that might have been a tragedy, but it is over now.  They cannot feel anything.  Nothing you do can harm them further."

The child continued to wait patiently at the door, mindlessly starting into space as he waited for his next orders.

Chapter 12 - Part V

"Khe..." Anita tried.  "Khe, he heb" she tried to pull out her husband's true name from her mind, practically coughing sounds out to give her final goodbye, but she couldn't complete the tune long-silenced in her heart.

She kneeled at the lifeless man and removed her head scarf, revealing a ghastly sight to Keubroc and Reiba.  Her eyes were dried out peach pits barely resting in sockets whose lids could no longer close, as they were not there.  Like streams feeding a lake, puffy, old scars meandered from cheekbone, forehead and temple to those eyes.  She put her hands to those eyes for a moment, and shook her shoulders in a stilled way, prompting Reiba to whisper "What is she doing?"

Before he could answer, however, Anita responded, having easily heard the woman.  "One is supposed to cry, isn't that right?  This is what it looks to cry, yes?"

"She says she is attempting to mourn the man." Keubroc translated to Eirdren for Reiba's benefit.

"I don't see why." Reiba began to reply matter-of-factly, but Keobroc interrupted her,

"Yes, when someone you love dies, you are supposed to cry.  And you are doing just fine."

Anita rose again in haste, seeing her task as accomplished, though no tears were shed.  "I do not love him, of course.  Do not mistake it."

"No, but you did."

"Perhaps.  I don't remember."

"I will tell no one." he promised.  She rewarded him with what would have been a nasty glare, had she the use of her old eyes.

"I will dispose of the body." she said unceremoniously, replacing her headscarf, to the relief of both Keubroc and Reiba, who had been disgusted by her visage.  "and then we must go."

The bei collected the man she had once held in her arms with tender affection.  Her smaller frame made the task difficult, but the exposed part of her face made no expression of it.  She brought it to a large, flat exposed rock where she laid the body out carefully.  The bei'thal had imprinted in her mind the need to erase the idea that a deceased bei ever existed by any means possible.  But fortunately for the man he once was, Davin was to leave the world in the way his male ancestors had since the Nedjleen had been carved from the stone of Mount Kidje by the all-mother.  He would rest in the palm of the all-mother's hands until the father sent his servants to take him, bit my bit, back to the sky, back to the firmament.  The all-father's crows would pick Davin's bones clean in a glorious sky burial and soon he would be sitting with the all-father in embrace of the all-mother and her daughters, the women of the Nedjleen.

Or so Anita would have believed long ago.  Now, she did not know what to believe, she only knew that this was what was done.  She stripped the body of its weaponry first, and pocketed it for her own use.  Of the black clothing he wore, that too was removed, including his chiffon headscarf.  His eyes, like hers, remained eternally open, and eternally dried out.  The lines of his scars, like hers, ran to his eyes and his eyelids were long gone, though the wounds of their removal had long since healed.

She started a small fire, using some dried brush and a few pieces of wood she had salvaged from one of the ruined houses of the village.  To the fire, she first added the clothes, pausing for just a second before finally adding the headscarf, in a failed effort at sentimentality.  It too burned with the rest.

Keubroc was finishing the last of a quick make-shift bandage for Reiba when the bei returned.
Anita walked over to the woman and roughly grabbed Reiba's right arm.  Reiba was pulled up without grace, but the disgraced noblewoman, still in pain and grasping at her side with her left hand, was unable to resist or defend herself.  "You will come with me until I am told what to do with you."  Reiba looked at the bei uncomprehendingly, as Anita's speech had never changed from the Yibouh tongue.

"Good.  You will help me to complete your master's quest.  Let us head to Pho-Boteth, then."

"You are not the one to order me, you who sound like bei'thal.  After the Silent Scholar has worked on you, perhaps our interactions will be different." As if to punctuate her intent, she drew a dagger to his direction.

Keubroc stepped back attempted some measure of diplomacy, "Of course.  Lead the way then.  I will follow."

"I am not going to Pho-Boteth."

"Where then?"

"When you are bei'thal, you will ask that question, and you will receive an answer.  If you are to be who you say you are to be, then you should follow the orders of the masters.  Go to Pho-Boteth on your own.  Begin your training."

"What of Chet?  Where shall this one go?" the gegleth worried, but he was ignored by both the nüdwuob and the bei.

"If you will not answer, then I will follow you.  I will not let the woman who killed my brother in arms walk away from my sight without seeing justice!" Keubroc said with agitation.

"I don't care about your feelings." Anita barked.  "I am trying to follow everything my masters tell me.  This is supposed to be easy!  The bei'thal speaks and the bei obeys.  Yet you and your stupid woman  make me feel that if I obey one of my commands I betray another.  I do not know how better to follow orders!

"You may not follow me.  You may have the scent of Vaughn bei'thal on you, and the words of the insect to back you up, but you are not bei'thal.  I cannot kill you if the Silent Scholar has designs on you, but I cannot show a foreigner anything more.  Do not even attempt to follow.  Make so much as one step towards me or this woman, and I will hear you, and I will kill you and I will kill her.  I will kill everything I see." she backed up, dragging the injured Reiba.

"What is going on, what is she saying?" Reiba shouted, panicked.  "Where is she taking me?" Her face was a mask of pain.  "Don't let her just take me away!"

Keubroc did not move a muscle and he watched the former Lady Archne get pulled away.  He stood frozen for some time as the two moved slowly back down the mountain.  "Keep an eye on that wound or you will not have a prize to return to the bei'thal!" Keubroc called out to her.

When she had left from sight, Keubroc gathered his things.  "Come with me, Chet." he sighed.  "It looks like you are with me."