Chapter 19: A Ghosting

Sethlzaar woke to the smell of roast meat wafting through the shelter as well as the absence of the old man. He stepped out, wondering if the old man had gone on his way.

He found the snow elevated at least three feet high. A small path waded through it, an obvious track left behind by the man in his departure. Yet, the smell of meat followed through, up to the high ground. It left Sethlzaar with questions.

Wondering what was going on, he cautiously climbed up to see what was above him. There he saw the old man.

The man sat, roasting a snow hare over a flame in a small clearing. The smell was torture to an empty stomach, and Sethlzaar wondered if the man did it intentionally.

"I didn't wish to wake you," the man called out, "but since you're up I could use the company."

No use hiding, Sethlzaar thought. He climbed up and joined the man at the fire.

The man offered him a piece of meat. In the morning air, and an empty stomach, it smelled with a promise of better things. Sethlzaar pressed his tongue to the roof of his mouth and shook his head. He rejected it, as he had done the last night.

"You had better eat something, boy," the man said, worry glazed his voice, "you're all skin and bones, which shouldn't be so for a boy your age."

True, Sethlzaar agreed.

He rose to his feet and headed back to the shelter. He had not seen himself fully. But from his hands, and the brief reflection of himself he caught in the nearby lake after breaking a portion of the ice in search of water over the weeks, he knew he was not one for a fight.

When he emerged from his shelter with his bow, arrows, and hunting knife, the old man was waiting patiently not too far away. They were both aware of his intentions and, with the knowledge, Sethlzaar figured he didn't have the time or energy to convince the man to leave him be. I'll just outrun him if I have to.

Sethlzaar's snares were destroyed by the blizzard. There were no signs of a catch anywhere around them by the time he got to them. It did not surprise him. The blizzard had done as he had expected. His snares had caught as he had expected.

He walked the forest in search of prey. The snow made movement a tasking ordeal only worsened by his lack of food. And the songs the old man sang as he followed behind were worthy of the pyre as far as Sethlzaar's ears were concerned.

Sethlzaar made to outrun him at various points but the man remained a good distance behind, not too close and not too far, ever gliding through the snow with such ease that Sethlzaar wondered if it was an acquired skill from years as a wanderer.

The sun reached its apex when Sethlzaar came across his first prey. He motioned the old man to silence, nocked an arrow, and took aim.

The bow string was tauter than he remembered. It seemed to drain whatever energy was left in his arms. Knowing his release would prove inadequate, he crept closer quietly, then let the arrow fly.

At the final moment his strength failed him. The arrow flipped with an awkward twang and missed its target. It was a failure in proportions unseen, even in Takaris.

Alarmed, the deer ran off.

The old man struck him hard on the head. It annoyed Sethlzaar to greater ends. The man had no right. He clenched his teeth, disappointment quickly replaced by rage.

He turned on the man. "What was that for?!" he yelled.

"They teach you how to shoot like that, or are you just horrible at this," the man mocked.

Sethlzaar growled in silence and walked away from the old man. He fought the urge to respond, understanding very well that his failure was a shame.

If Priestess Emeril had seen that... he thought as he moved forward.

The old man resumed his ghastly toned song behind him. He whistled like a dying bird, clapped at the oddest moments, and jiggled his shoulders occasionally, like a laughing monkey.

Evening came fast. With it, another opportunity arrived. Sethlzaar watched his prey, wondering where the strength to draw the bowstring a second time would come from.

The old man snuck up beside him and raised a suggestive finger. "May I say this," he said primly, "I understand that you are hungry. But don't you think all that fretting is going to chase your prey away."

The old man's words informed Sethlzaar of his wasted movements. He brought out an arrow and nocked it, and wondered just exactly how the deer had not fled. He took gentle breaths. They calmed him, and he took aim.

"Two deer in such a space," the old man whispered, a smile tugged at his words, "quite the luck. I wonder which god smiles on you."

Sethlzaar watched the animal saunter around, waiting for the right moment. The hunger was getting to his head. His eyes grew dizzy, his vision mildly blurry. It made it next to impossible to ascertain the animal's next movement.

For a moment, success proved itself a teasing but elusive dancer. Before Sethlzaar could make a choice on if to go after her, he paused. What he saw was incomprehensible.

Before him was a ghosting of shadows, like black smoke before each step. He lowered his bow and blinked twice.

The old man chuckled beside him. "You look like you've seen a ghost."

If only you knew.

Sethlzaar watched the deer with an eerie attention. He waited, held his breath, and squinted in focus. The ghosting was gone. He saw only a deer sauntering. He took aim again, unsure of how long his vision would remain clear.

Then he saw it again. A black outline, like the edges of a faint sketch. It ghosted forward with each step, apparitions of the dark, ghosting mere moments before his quarry occupied the space. They seemed to herald where the quarry would follow.

Sethlzaar drew back his arrow. Rationality did not support his decision. But it wasn't risk either. It was nothing as he had done with the birds. It was certainty, as a dying man knows the morning sun will rise to meet him dead.

He fired at the head of the ghost. His arrow cut through the falling snow. The deer occupied the space, and it took it in the neck.

Sethlzaar discarded his bow and fell into a frenzied run. He went after the deer as it fled, staggering with the arrow in its neck. He caught up to it easily. In a few steps he was on the animal, slicing and gutting it as was required after landing the final blow.

In time he was seated mouth-watering in his shelter. Bow unstrung and tucked in the corner, he waited for his meat to roast over the flame.

The old man seemed to study him as he watched his meal. Sethlzaar found himself wondering, and not caring, what he looked like. He was simply happy to have food for the night and the morrow.

"Save the hunger in your eyes, you look quite pleased with yourself," the old man observed.

Sethlzaar was.

He had feared he would succumb and ask the man for food. He was convinced the man had no ties with the seminary. Thus, there was no way the seminary would have known of it. Still, it simply felt wrong. He didn't want the old man thinking any less of him than he already did.

He spent three days with the man, finding himself growing accustomed to the man's songs and tales during his hunts. Each night the man told him tales of the worlds and people he had seen. Men and women. Boys and girls. Animals and insects. Stories and lies.

Sethlzaar found his favorite tale was of the boy who spent his whole life running from gods. Sadly, the old man never finished the story, saying the end was a tale for another day.

Sethlzaar noted how the man never brought up a conversation that led to talk of the seminary or the church in any way and wondered if it was an intentional choice. There was one more blizzard during their time together, but Sethlzaar had fashioned a door out of sticks and it had kept the wind out, but not so much the cold.

In this manner, days passed.

On a quiet evening Sethlzaar crept on the snow, hunting his prey. He had stalked a deer for about a mile before losing it. Now he followed a snow hare.

A few meters into his chase he found himself crouched low behind a tree. This hunt was different from the rest. The old man choosing to remain in the shelter had not followed him, as was his usual habit. Sethlzaar had felt the discomfort for a while but chose not to ask why so the man would not know how fond of his company he had grown.

He smelled a new scent carried in the wind. It was faint but he knew what it was, the tinge of iron in the air: blood. It took him only the briefest moment to make his decision.

He changed his path.

He crept in the direction the wind pulled out the scent. He found it easily, the snow crunching beneath his feet with each step. There, he crouched behind a tree and watched as a girl fought off a man amidst two unmoving bodies, the snow around soaked in blood.

Wielding two swords, she fought her assailant with a rage Sethlzaar had not known a girl could possess. The grace he was prone to seeing in the sword play of the seminary was nowhere to be found in hers. Completely feral in her movements, she parried, and evaded every thrust from her assailant.

Her cloak revealed a habit beneath it with each flail of her movement. She was a sister of the convent and, though he didn't know much about them, he knew they had their own warriors. Priestesses who took tests. Like Emeril.

The fight was quick. The girl parried, spun from a blow, and drove her sword through her opponent's neck in a riposte that brought him to his knees. She studied the man for the barest moment then pulled it out. The fight was ended.

She remained standing under the falling snow, unmoving, holding both blades by her side. Her hair, white as snow, reached into Sethlzaar's memory, calling upon a remembrance. Finding himself wondering what she was waiting for, he stepped out from behind the tree slowly.

A gnawing held his mind immediately and he paused. Something's not right.

The realization propelled him back into his cover.

He readied his bow.

"A human who cannot sense the presence of danger has no place on the battle field." Father Karnamis' words came to him.

There was someone else hiding amongst the trees, and Sethlzaar, hoping he had not been seen, watched and waited. But the girl never moved.

Is she baiting him? he wondered.

Finally, a boy stepped out from behind the trees and made his way to the girl. Sethlzaar shifted deeper behind the tree, made sure he was not seen. In turn, he could not see who it was. He heard the soft crunch of snow beneath each step and listened until it stopped.

"Three of Finil's promising, and still no luck. And they wondered why he sent them."

Sethlzaar recognized the voice immediately.

He knew who it belonged to and still couldn't accept it. There were many number of things he'd learned in the seminary; a grave number of things he'd been prepared for. But this had in no way factored into any of them.

So, risking discovery and dreading the decision, he peeked from behind the tree.

Frent stood before the girl. In his hand he held a knife.

Sethlzaar's eyes strained for sight. There was a beauty to the girl. The white hair. Her lips he was certain had once been the color of rose, now paled blue from the winter's chill. Her skin the brown of caramel. Her cheeks now stained in tears or, perhaps, melting snow. And though he couldn't see it, he knew her eyes to be green. It was a raging contrast of visage existent in one little girl. A raging contrast of visage existent in his memory.

A rage claimed him. Anger bridled, kindled from the recesses of his mind; emotions long fettered, untouched, bound. He stepped out with his bow drawn, and released its arrow.

Frent turned in time to see him, but not in time to avoid the arrow. It struck him in the thigh, and the boy fell to the snow. Sethlzaar pulled a second and let it fly. It struck the hand that held the blade, running it through the wrist.

Frent howled in pain. No doubt a nerve had been severed.

Sethlzaar wanted to know why Frent was here, what he meant by what he had said. But he found himself consumed more by a want to see him suffer.

He put another arrow in his other leg. Frent screamed.

"No... please... they made me do it, brother," Frent pleaded as Sethlzaar drew nearer. "They threatened my family."

Sethlzaar drew back another arrow and fired it into the snow beside Frent's head. "WE ARE YOUR FAMILY!!!"

His voice echoed through the woods. The girl flinched at the sound, reminding him of her presence.

He nocked another arrow, drew, and took aim.

"You have to believe me, brother," Frent continued with a face contorted from both pain and guile. "I had no choice, I had to protect my family."

Sethlzaar refused to understand the logic behind the words. Perhaps if it was someone else he would've. He looked at the girl. She stood where she was, still as the dead. Perhaps if she was someone else...

But she wasn't. And Frent was Frent. And he'd done what he did.

Finally, Sethlzaar spoke, his voice austere, cold as the winter around him. "You have no family."

One corner of Frent's lips twitched. Instinct guided Sethlzaar. He released two arrows in immediate succession. They buried themselves in Frent's chest.

Frent coughed up blood, his head fell back on the snow, and his hand fell open, arm outstretched by his side. A glass ball rolled from its grip. Inside, a darkness swirled, like the fire in the sun. It was black as the darkest night. Sethlzaar's back chilled. Old wounds prodded.

With blood escaping his lips, Frent smiled, and a secret passed between them. "You cannot protect her from what is to come," he said.

Sethlzaar had heard stories of people's first kill in the seminary. Some of the older boys who felt compassionate towards the younger ones told tales of how it changed a person, how its effects worked. They spoke of how it troubled the mind to take a life, how the sight churned the stomach, how some even threw up at it. How they knew was questionable.

Sethlzaar felt none of it as Frent fell silent and unmoving, like the bodies around them, his blood staining the snow red. All he felt was a calm. He found himself hoping Frent never found peace on the other side. That Truth would reject him.

Sethlzaar turned away from Frent and walked up to the girl. Her eyes were fixed on Frent's body.

He dropped his bow to the snow and took her by both hands. In them she gripped the hilts of her swords, her hands trembling. How she had not only survived, but also bested three grown men, he didn't know. But it was clear it had taken a toll on her. Her grip was tight, her knuckles taut, her fingers digging into her palm. It was the worst way to hold a sword.

Still, it seemed it was her way.

Sethlzaar ignored the blood that wetted her fists and now stained his. Gently, he massaged her knuckles, standing in front of her. Finally removing her gaze from Frent's body, she looked at him and he saw the fear and pain in her eyes. Red streaks of blood splashed across her face and stained the white of her hair. It said it all; she had fought, and she had won.

No one could take that away from her.

He leaned in, touched his forehead to hers. "It's over," he whispered.

"Is... is it?" she stuttered, unsure.

The words were barely audible but he heard them.

"Yes," he assured her. "By the way," he forced himself to smile, "you're all red. And I don't very much like this smell of iron."

"I-it's the blood," she said.

"Yes." He smiled. "Or maybe it's what you're holding so tightly." He applied pressure as he massaged her shaking knuckles. By the life of him, he'd never thought he'd ever get to say anything akin to his next words. And yet, even amidst the sorrow he felt as he said them, there was joy. Joy that he got to see her again.

"You should let them go, Sael."