Darlia stood alone on the Krilin battlements to watch the sun set between the mountain peaks of the Brintors. The steady breeze fanned her hair. Those same curly black tresses had, along with her finely-shaped features and large green eyes, earned her the name "rose of Krilin" years earlier, when she was young maiden. She was still very beautiful--if anything, her two and a half decades had made her more beautiful. Her figure had been ripened rather than flawed by the two children she had borne for her soldier husband. It was said that rumors of her beauty still drew visitors from the four corners of Avendar. If such rumors were true, the visitors were much more discreet now than those who had come to woo her when she was unmarried.
She was given to melancholy moods, and was especially pensive and sorrowful on this particular evening. Her husband Severid had left the fortress-outpost of Krilin, part of a guard contingent for the Baron's son who bore diplomatic messages to the Southland. She was not close her husband--she had married him because of her parents' wishes, as he was the most promising of the local men who had courted her. The handsome young soldier had turned out to be a withdrawn, petty man who viewed her as a prize more than a person. And she tired of being left alone with her two young boys, who wore her out with their rough play, and reminded her more than she wished of her husband, what with their wooden swords and mock battles with giants and dragons.
She whispered the wish of her heart, that she might find something to relieve the tedious and lonely life she led, and let the words fly away on the cool breeze. She then closed her eyes as the last glimmer of sun sunk below the jagged mountain crests, and let the wind caress her. As she felt the wind blow against her face, she pursed her lips, imagining that is was a secret lover's kiss. Suddenly, she opened her eyes in fright. Darlia had felt the kiss she had given the wind returned by the wind--had felt the warmth of lips brushing hers. But there was no one there.
Later that night, she dreamed. She was in the clouds, flying along side a dark-skinned companion who had fierce, wild features. It was dark, but in the light of the two moons she could see that her companion was nude, his dark-skinned body muscled, his strong mouth surrounded by a trim black beard. His head was shaven, but for a long braid of hair that dangled down his back. Her hand in his, they swept around dark mountain peaks, spun around and rolled through clouds, and skimmed glistening rivers and green forest roofs. It was exhilarating. Yet it wasn't until after he slowed their flight in a heart of a vast gray cloud, and drew her close into his arms, that she realized that she too was clothed only in moonlight and cloudmist.
Six months later, all of Krilin was caught up in the midst of a wild thunderstorm. Shutters had been swinging wildly outside the small, half-dark room within Krilin fortress walls, all throughout the labor. The fortress midwife at last held a red-faced, wrinkled baby in her hands, and its first angry squalling was harmonized by howling winds. The crackle and boom of lightning only caused it to yell all the louder. The tired midwife and exhausted mother could only look at each other with frightened eyes, to wonder at what the storm might portend. It had reached its pinnacle when the infant at long last emerged from its sheltered abode.
"This is an evil omen, for certain," clucked the midwife, and with a still-bloody finger drew the sign of the spear over the baby's chest, to ward against ill. "At least the child--manchild--is whole, Darlia. Severid will be pleased."
"Harakan, I will call him" tiredly whispered the mother, after the cord was severed. Darlia's face was flushed, her dark curls damp with the sweat of delivery. None of her other birthings had been so difficult--or under such unusual circumstances. And her two elder sons had been much less active in the womb, which thing had caused her husband hours of speculation on the child's chances for becoming a great army captain or even warrior hero. She held the infant to her breast, and recalled the legends she had studied as a young schoolgirl, and that had often come to her mind in the last few months: Hur'kan was a mythical demigod of the Brintor mountain range, a wild spirit who rode wind and wielded thunder.
"Hari, out of there!" threatened Darlia, for the third time. Harakan poked his head up over the top of the chest lid and grinned at his mother, his baby's smile still missing several teeth. She smiled despite herself. The dark-skinned, unsteady toddler was hard to become angry with. He had been a great source of comfort to her--in him she had a secret and a fantasy, a mystery that made her more than just a common soldier's wife.
He had been a good baby--a perfect baby, except for the crying. On six or seven occasions, when he had thrown his biggest infant fits, his cries had harbored overtones of the howling wind that had heralded his birth. At those times, she would whisper prayers to Jolinn as she did everything possible to mollify the child, and to end his cries that were as much haunting gusts as cries. The neighbors in the next-door residences would leave for errands or visits elsewhere, with dark looks on their faces and whispers on their lips.
Harakan had been excited when his father first talked about letting him come along on the camping trip. The 10-year-old hadn't understood why his older brothers groaned whenever their father brought up camping. He thought it sounded like a marvelous adventure, to be leaving the fortress and traipsing about the mountains--until now.
He wearily trudged behind his brothers, keeping pace with the march his father, Severid, called out. They were still in sight of the fortress, and were making long circles around it. His father had laughed when Harakan asked why they weren't going deeper into the mountains. "You'll be a hill giant dinner, if you don't smarten up. Not that you'd be more than a mouthful," he said.
Following behind the boys, Severid yelled in the same gruff manner and tone to his sons as he used with his fellow soldiers--the same manner which would soon make him a sergeant in the Krilin Guard. "Hari, pick it up! What do you think you are doing, slowing us down? Keep the step!"
After four hours of marching, Harakan's spindly legs were near the point of collapsing. With teeth grit and tears in the corners of his eyes, he willed his legs to obey despite the pain. They wouldn't. Finally he slumped to the ground, dropping his pack, utterly exhausted. His eyes were closed, and his ears heard the sound of his father muttering, the sound of approaching steps, and the rasp of his father drawing out the leather strap.
Afterwards, when they had pitched camp--practically under the west wall of the fortress--one of his brothers, Kindair, dared break rank enough to turn for a moment, and quietly, "Its okay, Hari. It was like this my first time too."
"Just because father's a sergeant, doesn't mean I have to be a soldier," said Harakan, looking at his two brothers. They were both in training now, but Harakan wouldn't begin, according to Severid, until two years from now, when he reached his 17th year.
"What else are you going to do?" asked Sammel, the eldest. "Work with the servant staff? Run messages? Apprentice to a butler?" Kindair nodded in agreement with Sammel.
"He's right, Hari. Father has raised us to be soldiers, ever since we were little. I don't think you will be happy, being a leatherworker's apprentice or a factor's assistant. We were born and raised for the military life--even you, little thunder cloud."
"I don't know," said Harakan. He looked down, feeling miserable. It was different for him than for his brothers, somehow, and they all knew it. They seemed naturally fit for the life in a rough border outpost. But they all sensed that Harakan was out of place, like a hawk in a flock of geese. His handsome features, large green eyes and black hair resembled his mother—but his skin was rather dark-hued, and he was thin and wiry, compared to thick and muscled build of his father and brothers.
Severid, too, had noticed how Harakan seemed unlike himself and his other sons. Once Harakan had overheard his parents fighting, after Severid had come home a bit drunk. Severid had demanded to know if Harakan was his son. Darlia had only snorted in disgust, and left to stay at her parents quarters as she generally did in such situations. At that moment Harakan knew that the gruff soldier wasn't truly his father.
It was his first night patrol. Sammel and Kindair marched along beside him. They followed sergeant Halfdel, who was in command of the column of 20 warriors marching along the high, pine-covered ridges that marked western borders of Krilin. Still uncomfortable in the oppressive, heavy armor, he was easily the worst swordsman in the patrol. He'd started his training four months ago, but it seemed like years ago, after all the drills and exercises and mock skirmishes and weapons instruction.
Harakan felt a cool breeze that filtered through the trees, and felt some measure of comfort. The wind...now there was something that had freedom. Harakan thought of how the winds followed their courses, had their currents, but were still free to shift and reverse, to fly up to the stars or drop down to blow the beads off the dew-covered grass. What would it be like, he thought, to be the wind...
"Huuumaaans! Crush theemmm!" The yell interrupted his daydreaming, and sent the column of warriors into a confused halt. Several then cried out, as they saw at least ten massive shadowy forms emerge from the cover of a thicket of trees and charge toward them. Harakan couldn't be sure, as the moons were both hidden behind the clouds, but what else could it be--Hill giants.
In a split second, Harakan realized that they didn't stand a chance against the giants. He turned, throwing down his sword, and ran.
He paused a moment, after getting away from the ridge where the battle still took place. He couldn't run in this armor--he began to strip it off, as quickly as he could, while listening to the deep giant shouts echoed by the higher human screams. He snorted in disgust as he finally heard Halfdel shouting the call to retreat, and hoped that his brother's hadn't died foolishly, but had done the same as he had.
It was the first and probably the last time Harakan would be in the Baron's office. Harakan followed behind his father, and entered the large chamber. The Baron was there, seated at his large desk across the room, flanked by his son and chief lieutenant. Sergeant Halfdel, half his head hidden in the wraps of a thick bandage, stood at the Baron's side as well. The Baron nodded at Severid, and then quietly observed Harakan.
"Lad, I know your training had just begun," the Baron finally said, "But even the untrained know not to break rank, not to flee at the first sign of attack." He paused, hand going down to rest on the pommel of his rapier. "Is there anything you can say for yourself? Do you have any way to explain why your cowardice?"
Harakan began to shake his head no, but he glanced at his father, and saw the look on Severid's face. A look of disgust. Severid hadn't handled the news of the death of his two sons well, and had hardly said a word to Harakan since his return.
A fierce, burning anger welled within Harakan. His brothers were dead because of this idiot Halfdel--and his father would have done just the same Halfdel, without doubt. He felt as if a shock or sparks of energy coursed from his head to his feet, and back.
"Your grace, I know you all think I'm a coward," he said, gaining courage with each word. "But I would rather be a coward than a stupid oaf who can't think for himself, who can only follow the orders of a half-wit!" He looked at Halfdel, the anger sparkling in his eyes. "Sergeant Halfdel should have called the retreat as soon as they attacked, instead of waiting for half of us... of them... to die!"
"Enough!" thundered the Baron. "You will not insult those in command, or question the decisions of those in command. We do think you were cowardly, lad, and rightly so. You are a coward." He cleared his throat. "Normally, you would be banished from Krilin, for abandoning your fellows in battle. You may well yet be, if you can't curb that attitude!" He continued on in a softer, but still stiff tone, "I give you your choice, lad: four week's confinement, and extra training till we've worked the insolence and cowardliness from your hide--or banishment. If you chose banishment, your shadow will never darken the gates of Krilin again. What do you chose?"
Harakan still felt the anger pulse and throb within him. Looking at his father again, and still seeing a face full of disgust and disappointment, he decided. He already felt like a stranger here anyway.
"Banishment," Harakan said defiantly, and walked out of the Baron's chamber. He didn't stop to see if his father or anyone else followed. He didn't stop at the family residence. At the fortress gates, he didn't stop.
Harakan awoke, and the first thing he was aware of besides his gnawing hunger, was the smell of salt. His eyes, after a few blinks, focused in on a grassy ledge that he had been sleeping on, but something was impossibly wrong--the ledge was set into a rocky cliff overlooking an ocean.
Blinking again, he forgot his hunger for a moment in his amazement. The last thing he could recall before falling asleep was his tortured, erratic wandering through the heart of the Brintor range. Some eight days since he left Krilin, he had cursed himself for a fool a thousand times to leave without any sort of preparation. He had stolen a bit of bread and meat from a woodcutter's shack on the third day, and the small mountain streams had supplied his needs for water, but hadn't had anything to eat since but a handful of bitter, unripe berries. Pride doesn't fill a stomach--and he had nearly died because of it. The last few days had been the worst.. he had staggered through the forests like a wild beast, finding a few unripe berries, and even trying to eat the moss from a tree.
"Wondering how you got here, lad?" came a voice from beside him.
Harakan looked around, but saw no source for the voice.
"If not--well, I certainly am," the voice continued. "I have few visitors. Come to think of it--I have no visitors, here."
"Who's there?" Harakan asked, still looking around for the mysterious speaker.
"Why, me of course," replied the voice, and with that a man faded into view at Harakan's side. "Its my doorstep you've been sleeping on, lad." The man was old and rather homely in appearance, with a white, limp mustache drooping over thin lips. He was dressed in a celeste-blue robe of the finest cut and cloth. A pattern featuring a triangled-eye symbol ran the length of a white belt at his waist. This was a scholar of magic, to be sure, thought Harakan. He had to be, using the magic of invisibility and being arrayed in robes like the Krilin scholars.
"You look half-starved, boy. I'm no soft-heart, to be taking in starving orphans, but I've got food and don't care for skeletons in my doorway. You'll work to earn it, after you eat it?"
Harakan could only nod slightly, the mention of food sending the pains of hunger all throughout his body, cramping him entirely. Then, with a wave of the man's hand, a doorway was revealed behind an illusion of rock in the cliff face behind them. Harakan painfully stumbled to his feet, and followed the magician inside.
"And as I said earlier, there are six tonal levels. For this phrase, you must raise your pitch to the fourth level--not the fifth, mind you, you'd get a nasty result, most unpleasant--so pitch at the fourth level while pronouncing the stressed syllable of third word, like so..."
Harakan stifled a yawn. It wasn't that Amin was a poor teacher--well, to be honest, it was. Magic was so fascinating to Harakan--far more interesting than the swordplay of the Krilin drillmaster. Or sweeping the floors of the mage's hidden cliff-home. But Amin had the most nasal, monotonous voice Harakan had ever heard. There were already six shimmering white discs hovering in midair around the mage, and Amin was readying for the seventh. Harakan absently began to wonder if he would do better experimenting on his own. Perhaps he would sneak back up to the library that evening--
"Lad..."
In fact, Amin had agreed to teach Harakan some of the rudiments of casting only after he found Harakan in the middle of an ignorantly dangerous casting in the library. He had been assigned as part of his chores to go dust the long book-covered shelves. But the spellbooks drew him. He had only read a handful of books at Krilin, as the commonfolk had rare access to them--and he hadn't dusted more than half a shelf before sitting down and opening an old, blue-bound volume with a silver-runed cover. Harakan could still feel the tingling sensation that spread across his entire body when he mouthed the first few words...
"I say, boy, pay attention! You wanted to learn to cast a floating disc, did you not?"
"I'm sorry, sir," Harakan apologized. "It's just that you are doing it wrong." Harakan clamped his mouth shut--not knowing why he said that, or how he knew it--he just did. And he didn't wish to offend the mage, who had given him shelter and food and was likely to boot him back out into the wild if he became offended. Harakan's mouth had gotten him into far too much trouble in the past, and showed no sign of letting up.
"What! Wrong?" Amin gave a tremendous snort, which caused the tips of his short mustache to be momentarily drawn up toward his nostrils. "A scholar of fortieth rank, and I don't know how to cast a disc. Indeed!" Another violent snort. "And what do you call these?" he grumbled accusingly, pointing at the discs around him.
"I'm sorry, sir, I'm really sorry. But I have an idea for making it, well... here, let me try this..." Harakan closed his eyes, and began an alternate pronunciation of the words, ignoring Amin's shouted warning. As he spoke, a powerful tingling sensation ran rampant throughout his body. Without knowing why, he changed the intonation and stress of the spell as he intoned it, and changed the final phrase altogether by adding a new word. Slowly, a silver-gray disc formed at his side. The disc glowed faintly and was larger than Amin's by half.
"By Enaerai," whispered the thunderstruck mage, and reached out to touch Harakan's disc. He immediately pull back with a curse when small bolt of electricity jolted out of the disc. "By all the Gods on a single scale, boy, how did you do that?" he demanded.
"I... I don't know. I just thought it would be nice if the disc were protected from thieves..." Harakan reached his hand down and placed it squarely on the disc.
"From thieves, is it?" murmured Amin. The mage gave Harakan a long, piercing look. Harakan would come to know that look very, very well.
"Well, you must be a changeling of some sort. Half elemental, for all I know," said Amin. They had been discussing why Harakan's variations on spells always seemed to work. A normal human apprentice wouldn't have survived a day, trying to cast such spells without preparation, let alone alter the casting, as Harakan had done.
"I'm just the son of Krilin commonfolk--a soldier and his wife," replied Harakan cautiously. "I'm nobody." And then, an image came into his mind of the long-ago argument between his mother and father, the night drunken Severid came home demanding to know who the boy's father was. "Just a commonfolk nobody," he repeated quietly.
"Yes, yes, so you believe," said Amin, but his bushy white eyebrows were furrowed as he scrutinized the young man in front of him yet again. "My magics don't reveal anything unusual about you--besides more resistance to electric shock than most have. And there is the question of how you appeared on my doorstep, a two-week journey from Krilin on a good horse, after only eight days of wandering on foot." He smiled. "You are no ordinary commonfolk boy. You are a puzzle." He chuckled. "Good thing stuffy old mages like puzzles, eh?" Harakan's response was a weak grin.
Over the past few weeks a friendship of sorts grew between Harakan and Amin. Amin gave Harakan far more respect and consideration than anyone ever had before--save his mother--and was rather thankful that Amin was so intrigued with the puzzle of Harakan's natural magical skills. Harakan had done enough chores for the mage to easily pay his debt, yet he stayed, continuing to do occasional odd chores the mage assigned him.
It remained unspoken between them, but soon he had become the mage's apprentice of sorts--and the mage's test-subject. They learned by experiment that Harakan's affinity with magic extended only to air-based spells. First, there was a bad experience with a borrowed book of fire scholar spells--resulting in a burnt wicker chair and scorch marks on the polished stone of Amin's front room. Next, a misfire with a water spellbook that resulted in freezing over the entrance to the mage's small shrine to Enaerai. After several more of such incidences, Amin pronounced Harakan's luck to be abnormally good, but his magical gift to be with air magic only.
One evening, Harakan was sitting out on the front step--the small grassy ledge that was the doorstep to Amin's dwelling. The sun had set, and he was gazing out over the sea as it reflected the darkness extending across the sky, and listening to the sound of the waves as the swells rushed toward and met the base of the cliff. A steady, warm breeze was stirring the grass around him, and he basked in the feeling of contentment and satisfaction that had grown as he stayed with Amin and began learning of magic. He felt at peace. He felt some lingering sorrow over his brothers, and was surprised at how much he missed his mother. But none of their relationships had been particularly close, and foolish as it seemed, Harakan thought, it was another life. Harakan had no doubt that he had found his true life's calling, here with Amin--to be a scholar of air magic. He silently thanked the stars, fate, and whichever power or influence had led him here from his unhappiness in Krilin.
He was startled when a distant voice seemed to whisper back on the sea breeze, "You are welcome--my son." The voice was so distant, so unreal, that he rubbed at his ear, not sure if he had actually heard anything at all. And then, on the breeze, the laughter of a woman--descending from an impossibly light, tinkling chime, to a sweeping cacophony of sound until it blended into the crash of the waves on the rocky cliffs below.
"Who is that?" called the young apprentice, rising to his feet. There was no answer--only the warm salty breeze rustling the grass at his feet. Daydreaming again, he thought. With another rub at his itching ear, he turned back to open the hidden dwelling's door, ready to begin another lesson.
