Seeker

The sun was setting. Pain bloomed in the Young Dread’s cheek as the Middle struck her across the face. She fell to her knees by the fire they had built near the ruins of the castle. She had chosen not to block the blow.

“Why did you help the girl?” the Middle asked. Before she could get up, he pushed her with his foot, sending her back to the ground. He was examining her as though she were a rat he was planning to slice apart very slowly.

“There is no need for anger,” her master said.

Her master was on the other side of the fire, tending to Briac Kincaid. Since coming fully awake, Briac had been in agony. The Old Dread had dug the bullets from Briac’s wounds, a procedure accompanied by great amounts of screaming. The Old was now packing the wounds with herbs they had gathered, and was binding them tightly with strips of cloth, while Briac continued to moan and thrash about.

She and the Middle had climbed down the steep path that led from the barn at the top of the cliff to the riverbank below. There, she had swum across to the far shore, where the athame had landed in thick silt, unharmed. Now they were by the ruined castle, where she had trained a hundred times over many hundreds of years, as the castle slowly fell to pieces and was swallowed by grass and soil.

The Middle Dread controlled his voice and asked again, “Why did you help the girl?”

She pulled herself up into a sitting position and wiped the blood from the corner of her mouth.

“She is not a girl,” the Young Dread told the Middle. “She is a sworn Seeker, the last possessor of her family’s athame, and she was in danger. Why would I not help her?”

Gently her master said, “Briac Kincaid is the oldest of their house. He considers he has a claim on the dagger.”

“We believe the athame ends up with whom it belongs, do we not?” she retorted.

With great effort, Briac pulled himself to a sitting position and looked at her across the fire. She saw only hatred in his hard eyes.

“No,” he said. “You interfered and gave her the lightning rod. You allowed her to leave with something that was mine.” He was fighting to control his voice through the pain. “The Dreads must retrieve it for me.”

“Do you understand?” the Middle asked her. “You have made an error. Because of that error, we must now recover Briac Kincaid’s athame and set things right.”

Again, the Middle Dread was coming to the aid of Briac Kincaid, bending the rules to suit him. The Young Dread wondered anew what secrets Briac was keeping for the Middle, what power Briac held over him. She herself knew of many unjust acts by the Middle, but Briac must know of more. She would wager that quite a few of those acts had been done by both together.

“Set things right?” the Young Dread scoffed. “Master, what is this word he uses?”

The Old Dread regarded her across the firelight, but said nothing.

“Are you a Dread?” the Middle asked. “Feared by Seekers for your justice? You have made an error and must correct it.”

“And you?” she asked. “Will you see to justice?”

He struck out at her with his heavy hand, but this time the Young did not wish to be hit. She moved aside, twisting sinuously away from him. Without conscious thought, her knife was in her hand, like magic. Her arm flashed out at the Middle. It clashed with his own knife, which had appeared in his hand. Both blades glowed orange in the firelight.

“Enough,” the Old Dread said.

The Young and the Middle froze, holding their blades still, but they did not put them away.

“Am I a person, Master?” she asked.

“A needless question, child,” he answered.

“Am I a person, or a possession?” she demanded. “Do I have a will?”

“You have a will,” her master said.

“You gave me into the care of the Middle and told me to obey him.”

“Is that what I said, child?” The Old Dread’s words were soft.

Her knife struck out. The Middle met it with his own. Then his left hand stabbed forward, another knife suddenly appearing there.

The Middle had properly bandaged the wound across his chest, but he was still injured, and the Young hoped this would give her an advantage. She thrust her body to the side and slipped away, pulling a second knife from a sheath at her waist.

“The oath of the Dreads: to uphold the three laws and to stand apart from humanity, so our heads are clear to judge,” she said. “Master, do you know what happened to the Young Dread before me?”

The Middle slashed out at her with both hands. She blocked his weapons.

The Old Dread did not respond.

“Do you know what happened to the Young Dread before me?” she asked again. “And to John’s mother? Has the Middle told you that? It is always my oath of which he speaks. What about his own?”

The Middle made no reply. The Young Dread’s master, sitting on the other side of the fire, was equally silent. The Old Dread was regarding her quietly, and the Young Dread realized her master knew, or at least suspected, the things the Middle Dread had done in his absence. How could he not? He read the Young’s mind as easily as he breathed. He must see inside the Middle’s mind as well.

She had been overjoyed to find her master on the estate, sure that he would finally make things right with the Middle. But he knew what the Middle was, it seemed, and did nothing to stop him. In a flash of understanding, she realized the Old, her good master, was tied to the Middle somehow.

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“Let me kill him!” she said.

There was no response from her master. And at this moment, his silence in itself meant something. If the Old Dread did not order them to stop, there was nothing to prevent her. She could remove the Middle from her life. She could repay him for so many injustices …

Her body moved into full battle speed. Her knives streaked through the air, orange arcs in the firelight. The Middle responded too slowly. He was not fully back to himself after his long stay There. She thrust forward. Then she saw her mistake.

He had maneuvered her onto uneven ground. She was losing her balance. In one swift motion, he yanked the knife from her hand and hit her ear with its pommel, sending her sprawling to the dirt.

Before she could recover, he stepped on her left wrist, pinning that hand and its knife to the ground. Then he leaned down and ripped the front of her shirt, tearing it carefully from her neck to her stomach and throwing the cloth aside. Her small breasts were exposed. She reached with her right arm to cover herself, but he stepped on that wrist as well. He was standing over her, staring down at her nakedness with a look of disgust. He bent over so his face was near hers and pinched one of her breasts hard. He smiled when an expression of pain moved across her face.

“Not a woman yet,” he said evenly. “You are a little girl. A Dread only because we lack someone better, because your master knows that you are not worth the time to kill.”

He stared down at her for several seconds, letting her know that she was at his mercy. Then he stepped away.

The Young Dread pulled her cloak around her, but she did not move from the cold earth. Anger and humiliation held her motionless for a long while.

Much later, the Young Dread still sat where the Middle had knocked her down, her cloak tight about her, covering the tatters of her clothing. She was rocking back and forth, but when she became aware of her motion, she stopped. She would control her hatred. She would be perfectly still.

Briac had fallen into a troubled sleep, his moans dying out, to be replaced with mumbled words in his dreams. The Middle Dread had wrapped himself in his cloak and lay near the fire, his eyes closed.

The Young’s eyes were transfixed by the Middle now, watching his chest rise and fall. His heart was somewhere inside that chest, beating away, keeping him alive. Until it stops beating, she thought.

And yet, her master had done nothing to help her kill the Middle Dread. Perhaps he had allowed her to fight him only to teach her a lesson—a lesson that the Middle would always beat her and that she should obey.

Gentle hands were probing the side of her head, touching the ear the Middle had damaged with the knife hilt. The skin was split, that much she could feel.

“This is not bad,” the Old Dread said as he examined the wound in the firelight. A moment later, she felt cool relief as he rubbed a poultice of herbs into the injury.

“Let me see the other,” he told her. “The wound he pretends he did not give you.”

The Young unwound her cloak and allowed him to examine the scar along the side of her abdomen, where the Middle had stabbed her. The tissue was thick and ropy under her skin, but the lines of the wound were fading. The medicine of this time had done strange things to her flesh, allowing it to heal almost perfectly. The Old Dread’s fingers traced the thin scar.

“He is cruel,” he said at last.

“He is cruel. And you have left me in his charge.”

“He is mine,” her master told her. “I have created him as he is. He fights well, for poor reasons. He kills unnecessarily and often. And he makes mistakes—such as traveling There with an injury serious enough to divert his attention. He might have been lost between forever.”

The Young kept her face neutral as she considered this possibility.

Her master continued, “But there are things I have promised—” He stopped. “I am sorry you must live in his presence.”

Let me kill him, then! she wanted to scream. Out loud, she whispered, “What happened to our noble purpose, Master?” It was the question Quin had asked, but it had been the Young Dread’s own question for hundreds of years.

The Old did not answer immediately. His thoughts seemed to fold in upon themselves.

“The athame was meant to allow a great mind, a skillful mind, to move beyond the boundaries of human life,” he said eventually, in a low and solemn voice. “Why should such a mind be bound to one location? If he could move freely, act freely, imagine what he could accomplish. A Seeker, using an athame, could appear anywhere—inside a guarded fortress, in the private chambers of a king, in a great university on the other side of the world. And so he could … help fate. He could seek the best way for mankind, could he not? It was my belief that great minds with the proper tools could change history.” His eyes turned to her. There was almost a pleading in them. “We saw some of those changes ourselves. Seekers have determined the course of great battles, toppled tyrants …”

“But that is not all they have done, Master.”

His eyes took in the campsite and the remains of the fire. “No,” he agreed. “Some have used the athame for greed and spite and revenge.”

“More than some.”

“We have laws.” They were words of protest, but his voice sounded hollow, as though it had been drained of life.

“You speak … as though we began with you,” she said. “As though the athame came from you. Is it so?”

The Young turned her head slightly to watch one side of the Old Dread’s mouth pull into a half smile.

“The athame … It’s origin is a tale for a future time, child. If I am the first, I am also the last. But which side of our history is the beginning? Which is the end? Between now and the end—or the beginning,” he went on, “I must spend much of my time asleep, stretched out, trying to remain alive in order to set things right. Our bodies are not intended for the things we Dreads make them do. There are seasons to our lives. When we defy them, we are not well. I have been woken too early again. It is always too early. I fear I would need a thousand years of sleep to catch up. But I do not have so long. We will set things right here, and I will stretch myself out again.”

Silence fell between them, until the Young Dread finally dared ask, “Were you a great mind, Master?”

A real smile crossed his face. “You don’t ask if I am a great mind, child? Because I speak gibberish now? Let me tell you—I once thought I was a great mind.”

“And now?”

“Now it does not matter. Great minds are not what’s wanted. Only good hearts. Good hearts choose wisely.”

“How does one find a good heart?”

“It is luck, child. Always luck. With you, I have been very lucky.”