Wing & Nien Read online

  “Good morning,” Lant said. “How are you? How’s the hip?”

  “Sore, and better,” Wing said.

  “Hungry?”

  “Thirsty, mostly,” Wing replied.

  Lant poured a tall glass of water and set it down on the counter before Wing.

  His fingers were so swollen he could not hold the cup. Pinning the cup between his open palms, he raised it precariously to his lips. He managed to get more down his throat than on his shirt and Lant refilled his glass, asking, “Have you any henku tea at home? It will help with the swelling.”

  “I think so,” Wing replied.

  Commander Lant opened a cupboard and took down a jar of a loose, bright leafed tea. “I’ll send some with you just in case.”

  “Thank you.”

  The rest of the house was still quiet. It was clear Lant’s mind was disturbed.

  “I hope we did not interrupt your friend’s visit too much,” Wing said, accepting the small bag of tea leaves.

  “You did not.” Lant hesitated, considering something. “I’m actually glad you were able to meet him.”

  “He seems a good kind.”

  There were questions Wing could have asked to be polite, but he already knew the answer to most of them, having heard the conversation during the night.

  “He is.” Lant exhaled heavily. “I would have invited you to join us for the evening but you needed your rest.”

  “Yes,” Wing said.

  “Still, there are things he told me that, I think, you should know.”

  Wing set his glass down carefully. His eyes fixed upon it, he said, “The Valley of Tou was taken by the Ka’ull.” He felt Lant’s eyes move to him before he looked up. “I woke last night — I heard the conversation. Some of it, anyway.”

  Lant sighed and leaned on the counter. “That’s not altogether a bad thing,” he said. “I am at a loss, Wing. After the boys went to bed last night I could not sleep. I have tried to prepare for this with the Cant. But we are not big enough. We simply do not have the numbers.”

  Wing listened, his swollen, purple fingers resting lightly against the cool surface of the water glass.

  “We will need the help of the other Valleys if we are to survive what might be coming. But I cannot convince the Council of it.”

  Wing could feel the weight of Lant’s gaze and knew before Lant spoke again what he was about to say.

  “I know I said I would not ask anything more of you, Wing. I know I’m breaking my promise to Nien that I would not ask you again. But it’s become clear to me that you are the only one the Council will listen to.”

  Wing felt his heart go very still and very quiet in his chest.

  “I know what I ask,” Lant said. “I know it is no small thing. But you must understand why I ask it.”

  Slowly, Wing raised his face. “I do understand, Lant. Believe me, I understand. But I can’t.” The despair in Lant’s expression made Wing feel sick.

  “Will you tell me why?” Lant asked.

  “False hope,” Wing said. “If I were to speak to them, they would continue as they ever have. In fact, I’m afraid it will only encourage them to do nothing. They will take my admonition as an acceptance of the role of Merehr. And, as that, they would not believe we need the help of the other Valleys. They will use that as an excuse to remain separate from them.”

  Lant’s lowered gaze fixed on his own cup of water.

  “Still,” Wing said, “if it were only just that.”

  “What, then?” Lant asked carefully.

  “It’s, I...” Wing started to say.

  How could he tell Lant that he had had visions? That he had seen what had happened to Lou, to Tou?

  At last, Wing managed to raise his eyes and look at him.

  “Commander, with all my heart, I wish they would listen to you. I have told them to listen to you. If I could will anything, I would make that so.” As Lant, a man as strong as any Wing had ever known, looked back him, Wing could see the toll the revolutions of trying to help Rieeve had taken on him, how desperate his struggle had been. So, it pained Wing even more when he said, “I do not know the truth of what I am, but that doesn’t mean I can live a lie. Nor does it mean I can give the people reason to believe in one.”

  It seemed to take all of Lant’s strength as he nodded once and straightened his back. “I’ve got a Council meeting this morning,” he said.

  “Will you tell them?” Wing asked.

  Lant’s chest rose and fell heavily. “Yes. I don’t know what they will do, but they should know.”

  Wing felt drained of life, as empty as the empty glass between his swollen and aching hands.

  There was nothing he could do to open nor to change the minds of their people. So far there had been little Lant had been able to do either.

  Yosha, Wing swore in his mind. What will it take? The need to have Nien back surged bright and painful in him. And Wing was not the only one that needed him to return. It was clear Lant needed his First as well.

  Nien, Wing thought. Can you hear me? Your people, your family need you. I need you. Are you ever coming home?

  Chapter 27

  On Deaf Ears

  L ant walked slowly on his way to the council meeting.

  He was disappointed, gutted even, by Wing’s refusal to come with him and speak to the Council.

  But that did not mean Wing was wrong. More than likely, he was right: If he stood up as Merehr the Council would feel relieved of having to do anything. They might even disband the Cant, needing only that excuse to do so.

  Rarely had Lant ever felt so helpless. His mind worked in a way that was immune to corners and dead ends. There was always a different way, a new direction, a place in the circling wheel that would continually bring fresh avenues and ideas to mind.

  He hoped such would be true today.

  He strode down the near-empty streets and entering the Council chamber took his seat to wait for the rest of the Council members to arrive. One of the quiet ones on the Council, Lant normally said very little unless asked. This morning his inner-involvement was even more acute, his concentration so deep that Grek Occoju had to say his name twice before getting his attention.

  “Councilman? Commander Lant?”

  Lant looked up.

  “It appears you have something on your mind,” Grek said.

  The moment of silence before Lant replied registered heavily amongst the other members.

  Lant leaned forward. Beneath the table, his hands were clenched. There was so much he could say, so much he wanted to say to prepare them. But he’d already said it all. Over the revolutions he’d said it all a hundred times. So, raising his face he said simply, “I have received confirmation: the Ka’ull have seized the valley of Tou.”

  The effect of this news on the Council was profoundly worse than the news of the fall of Lou. Lou was the northingmost valley on the continent, it was very far away — it might as well have been another continent entirely — the attack upon it easily attributed to a coastal skirmish. Tou, however. Tou was just on the other side of the Ti-Uki Confluence, the headwaters of the Tu’Lon River just above Rieeve.

  As the members’ initial reactions issued out into the room, Grek Occoju met Lant’s gaze. The two men waited a bit longer for the room to quiet.

  — And it did, upon Councilman Moer Ta’leer’s saying: “We cannot wait any longer for Son-Cawutt Wing to accept who he is.”

  Lant and Grek looked in Moer’s direction. Lant spoke first. “And what is it you think he’ll do? Even if he is Merehr, he is only one man!”

  “One man?” Councilman Brauth Vanc said. “I swear, Councilman, it is as if you have never read the Ancient Writings. Merehr’s reach far exceeds our feeble attempts to stand against this enemy, if indeed, they have any intentions for Rieeve.”

  “Councilman Vanc is right,” Fu Breeal said. “There is no proof that the Ka’ull intend on coming here. It may be they only wanted Lou and Tou. It is possible they
will stop there.”

  Lant felt as if his body were on fire. He wanted to tell them all he knew, how he knew that the Ka’ull would not stop with Lou and Tou, how they were just getting started. How important Rieeve was to them. But the Council and the people were filled with generations of belief that Merehr would call down armies from the sky, perform spontaneous healings, cause and quit earthquakes, reach — even into the other worlds — to save them all.

  The fire in Lant’s body spent itself. He suddenly felt like a man twice his age. “You believe in Wing so mightily,” he said with deep resignation, “why don’t you simply test him, show him to himself? I see no other way to convince him.” As soon as the words left his lips, Lant couldn’t believe he’d said them.

  The sting, however, had little impact as another of the Council members replied in all seriousness: “It’s been considered.”

  Grek Occoju said to Lant, “Will you speak with Wing?”

  “I have spoken with him before,” Lant replied tiredly. “Many times.”

  “Then perhaps this does require a little something…extra.”

  The challenge was there in Grek Occoju’s eyes. Lant didn’t like it. But before he’d even walked into the Council chamber that morning he’d known it — Wing was the key. Even as Wing had sat across from him that morning, saying that he could not be what the people wanted him to be, Lant had known it. The cost of continuing to press Wing would be great, to Lant himself, to Wing and his family, and to Nien. But the cost of not trying to convince Wing was much higher. It could mean all their people.

  Merehr. The word sounded in his mind with a weight almost as great as the promise he’d made to Nien —

  The promise he’d have to break. The promise he’d already broken that morning when he’d spoken with Wing.

  Glancing about at the earnest faces of his fellow Council members, Lant sighed inwardly. He did not know what Grek Occoju was about but found, to his regret, that he had nothing more to say. In that way, Wing was right, once the Council made up their minds there was no changing them.

  So, in silence, Lant conceded, though he could not speak the words.

  Chapter 28

  No Turning Back

  T he late afternoon sun was bright and cold as Wing worked around the house and barn with the team, pushing snow. Snow levels were not bad and he could have let it be, but he wanted to be outside and keeping the snow cleared now would help when the heavier storms came.

  He’d mostly recovered from his near fall from the roof, there remaining only a small hitch in the leg from which the timber had hung and the general soreness in his shoulders and hands. His nose had healed again, the “character” in the bend and, now, dent a thing he’d simply shrugged off. Thankfully, they had only one mirror in the house and it was up in Joash and Reean’s room.

  The sunsteps passed quickly and by early evening, Wing and the team had, in places, pushed the snow back to dirt.

  “Well,” Wing said with a hint of self-amusement, “that should over do it. Let’s head in.” Hungry, and sure the horses felt the same, Wing released the shift of flat metal that was the snow plow and left it behind the barn.

  With the long reins draped over their backs, the team followed Wing like obedient hounds. Rounding the side of the barn, Wing looked up and stopped dead in his tracks. Beside the house were picketed at least thirteen horses. He recognized a few of them as belonging to Council members.

  What’s going on? he wondered. He’d not seen such a gathering at his home since…

  The blood drained from his face.

  …not since he’d been a boy of fourteen revolutions and a delegation of the Rieevan Council and other villagers had come out to speak with Joash and Reean.

  About him.

  Staring fixedly at the congregation of horses, Wing recalled sitting at the back of the room that night so long ago, listening as the villagers and Council skirted the subject with his parents, asking questions about his behavior, interests, education. Though he feigned ignorance, Wing knew who they thought him to be and he wondered if that were the reason he felt so different, so unlike everyone he knew. He wondered if that was why he just knew things about people, the earth, and even animals that others seemed unable to. He’d not thought this ability abnormal. Uncommon, perhaps, but not unnatural. Nevertheless, he’d said nothing, fearing that if he did acknowledge it they would use his confession to trap him into their version of what it meant.

  So, he had held his silence, and as he’d sat at the back of the room, he’d seen in the eyes of the Council members a look that set upon him like a storm, warning him that secrets were the soil from which desperate acts of self-preservation sprang.

  In the revolutions since Wing had tried to discover the meaning behind what he was, behind his abilities that seemed so special to others, and come up empty. He’d decided it was just the way he was, born that way. There was no explanation and, more importantly he’d decided, there didn’t need to be one.

  Still, his being settled with the matter had no effect whatsoever on the people, nor the Council, and Wing had watched the internal warning he’d felt that day as a youth coming true: the people were becoming more fanatical and persistent as the revolutions went by. And now, with the fall of the upper valleys…

  Behind him, one of the plow team nipped his shoulder snapping Wing back to the present.

  Turning, he continued into the barn. The team came in behind him and stopped outside their stalls, waiting for him to remove their harnesses. Wing did so by rote, offering an absent-minded clap on their rumps as he poured out some grain and threw in the hay, his thoughts running around the notion of jumping onto one of the other family horses and making for the tree line.

  But that would leave his family to face the Council’s questions alone, as they had done so many times before.

  Wing stepped to the barn door and looked out at the house.

  Nien was gone, the words he’d said when he left rang in Wing’s ears: “Say something! Say anything!”

  Wearing stones for shoes, Wing quietly left the horses and made the longest walk of his life from the barn to the house.

  Inside, Reean and Jake were trying to come up with enough mugs and cups to offer their visitors a drink as Joash sat, stone-faced, on his stool near the door.

  All eyes shifted to the door as Wing came in. Buying himself a few more seconds, Wing took his long coat off and hung it carefully beside the door.

  As he turned, “Son-Cawutt Wing,” greeted him in a chorus of voices.

  He nodded to them collectively, said hello, and moved over to the table. His back briefly to the room, Reean met him, and looking up at him in the shadow of his shoulders, pressed a cup of hot mulled wine into his hand. Before she could whisper what Wing could read so easily on her pained expression, he mouthed: “It’s all right.”

  But Reean shook her head, “No, son,” she whispered, “they, they brought…We tried to reason with them…”

  Before Wing could understand what his mother was trying to say to him, there was a scratching of chair legs across the wooden floor behind him and voices speaking, offering him their seats. Wing tried to reassure his mother before turning around to the men in the room and motioning for them to keep their seats. Placing a foot upon the wall that separated the main room from the back bedroom, Wing leaned back, holding his cup against the hard plane of his stomach. There was a ringing in his ears and a vacuum in his chest and he fought the inclination to walk right back out the door. For a moment, it was only the solid warmth of the mug of mulled wine that kept him from doing so.

  From the center of the room, Grek Occoju said, “It’s been a long time since we, as a Council and villagers, have been out to see you and your family.”

  “It has been,” Wing agreed, without joy. “What brings you out this time?”

  Wing could see in Grek Occoju’s expression that he was no more interested in small talk than Wing was.

  “I’m sure you can guess
,” Grek Occoju said, “that we came out to speak with you.”

  Wing nodded.

  “Perhaps Commander Lant has told you that the valley of Tou has also fallen to the Ka’ull...”

  “Yes,” Wing said.

  “We were hoping Lant could convince you,” Grek said. “But as he has failed to do so, we’ve come to ask you ourselves.” Grek took a breath and Wing felt the rest of the eyes in the room move to the Councilman. “The people think you’re the one. The news of the fall of Lou was not enough to persuade you. Now, is this news of Tou being taken not sufficient impetus to accept your calling? Will you believe in our people as they believe in you?”

  Nothing like coming to the point, Wing thought.

  Wing took a slow, steadying drink from his mug. When he lowered it again, he raised his eyes and addressed the anxious faces in the room: “What do I have to do?”

  “Do?” Councilman Occoju said.

  “To convince you that I am not who you think I am?”

  Hands worked uncomfortably in laps and short glances were exchanged between the villagers and Council members.

  “Why do you think you are not?” Grek Occoju replied.

  Though the Council Spokesman’s tone was tinged with the voice of a father trying to be patient with a child, Wing was surprised at how much sincerity it contained. Wing knew the present company felt they saw further than he did, saw more in him than he saw in himself. He knew they believed that they understood the Ancient Writings in ways Wing himself had not yet come to, and perhaps they did. He was willing to concede that possibility. Nevertheless, he could not take their word on faith when it overrode all that, to Wing, was incontrovertible proof of the opposite — that he was a farmer, and that alone as far as he knew. Wing felt an ironic, rather sad sort of tickle in his stomach. He was a farmer, and one hounded by garish nightmares at that. That didn’t make him special, it only made him troubled.

  “If I am,” Wing said slowly, “it will only serve our people if I come to it on my own.” He looked around the room. “I think it’s obvious, after all this time, that we cannot force each other — neither you to accept what I have told you nor me to accept what you want of me.”