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[Dravite]

82 Spring, 515 AV
Morning

The Serenity Tree loomed up ahead like a mute skeleton, its enormous trunk twisted and windswept. Reaching branches spread out like distorted limbs floating above the ground where its giant root system danced in and out of the rich Cyphrus soil like serpents bathing in Syna's light.

Dravite didn't dare touch the sacred tree lost under moss but noticed on closer inspection the cryptic patterns of the bark, lifted and chipped like a painted wall forced to withstand a thousand summers. The finger ends of its branches were lush and riddled with small green shoots and tight buds that had cracked open to reveal soft, papery leaves.

The closest river was the Itrod, at least a four day ride west the way the crow flies which meant the water-table must not be buried too deep on this part of the plain, closer than most to the swamps of Kenash. There was something noble about the way it stood alone unmoving like the rest of the golden tide, its strength tried and tested by the gods; weathered and weary, yet still The Serenity Tree thrived.

“Here,” the team leader from The Watch said, pointing to the base of the tree and the dried earth that surrounded it.

The handful of recruits that had come along dismounted and let their striders mosey about the plain. This was merely a scouting mission and no recovery work would be done today. “Stick together, don’t go too far, respect the traditions of this place, and above all, stay alert.”

Dravite combed his fingers through Cree’s mane and watched the sky for a time, cloudless, blue; it stretched out for miles into a hazy, white mist where it was impossible to differentiate between sky and earth far off in the distance. He sat down in the shade of the tree, watching the patterns of dappled light dance back and forth with the breeze against the ground.

The man felt a surreal sense of peace wash over him as if lulled into a dreamlike state by the warmer weather and tranquillity of what he considered a holy place. Slipping into a trance came easy here where there were so few distractions. The blue tentacles of the broken web spread out around the man; still damaged and isolated from the rest of the line after the Djed storm in the spring of 512 AV. The Watch had been a part of rebuilding the line and though this spring they had celebrated the final replacement of the damaged web, there would always be remote areas in need of upkeep and attention.

Being a part of the web felt like sitting in the rolling waves of a shallow tide, every creature made its own ripples felt across the surface of silky blue. Dravite could sense Cree near him though he did not see with his own eyes; he felt the animal’s foot-falls just as he did those of his peers, the small game animals spread out beyond them and something bigger moving slowly across-country further still. His reach was limited only by his lack of skill in webbing and the broken threads that drifted like seaweed that had lost its hold on the sand.

For now the man was content to sit and listen out for the voices that could usually be heard on the Drykas web. .
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[Mahaleth]

The grasslands were as savage as they were beautiful. Just a night before they had claimed Jakovi Windborne of the Emerald Clan, only twelve years old, Belhatir’s precocious little cousin. Jakovi was young and already bonded to a Strider, and like most young, strong boys he was foolhardy and too brave for his own good. Belhatir saw Jakovi and his strider that day, “just taking a ride,” Jakovi said. “For practice.”
“Not too far,” Belhatir had said. “It might rain.”
“I’m not afraid of rain!” Jakovi laughed, arrogantly tossing his hair like an excited young foal. “I’m not afraid of anything.”
Belhatir smiled. “No.” He patted the strider’s rump as its long tail tried to flick away the flies that were biting at its ankles. “No, you’re not. Good.” The strider nickered, huffed. It was a beautiful horse; dappled, strong, clear eyes and straight teeth. Belhatir watched the two of them, Jakovi and his strider, as they galloped away and turned into two black dots in the horizon until they were gone.

Only the strider returned that evening, and by the time the Ankal found Jakovi in the web it was too late. It was Belhatir, wracked by some inexplicable guilt, who went to search and found him on the bank of Bluevein near the Iysan Ruins. The boy had been ravaged by something with sharp teeth and claws.

Jakovi’s body reminded Belhatir of one of his sisters’ dolls. Too light. Too bony. Belhatir lifted it on to the Scaffolding as Jakovi’s mother and brothers, all younger than Jakovi, laid offerings around the cadaver. All of them had made their faces hard and grey as stone, even Jakovi’s mother. But her knuckles were white around Mareeya’s hand, and she was biting her lip so hard that Belhatir could see the marks begin to form around her teeth.

Belhatir spent the rest of the evening in silence. Mareeya, unused to a quiet husband, started to ask questions.
“What’s the matter?”
Belhatir put some food in his mouth and, chewing, shook his head.
“Are you mourning your cousin. Belhatir?”
He looked down at his feet and his hair veiled his face. The expression was so shy, so boyish that Mareeya thought she saw the Belhatir that Lazuli said she used to know: quiet, thoughtful, sweet. Mareeya’s expression softened.
“It’s only death. The boy wasn’t the first to die here and--”
Belhatir cut her off. “I know,” he snapped. “You don’t have to tell me these things, woman. I live here, too.”
Mareeya's shoulders stiffened, and for the rest of the night she was quiet too. Belhatir was all too happy to be left alone, but he knew that Mareeya had a point. The boy wasn’t the first to die and he wouldn’t be the last, but there was something about this death that stung Belhatir more than the others. A shadow followed him around the morning after and was still there when Belhatir joined the men of The Watch at the Serenity Tree.

He barely heard the banter among them, contented instead to play with his axes -- get a little practice with them in while there was nothing much to do. He wasn’t the best at his chosen weapon. Sometimes his hand slipped when he tried to whip the axe around his head. Sometimes he might have shaved off the ends off his hair when he tried his hand at aiming at a far off tree.

“Look at Dravite.” One of the men from the pavilions of the Opal Clan said his brother’s name, which made Belhatir pay attention. Dravite was sitting off to one side near the Serenity Tree, looking glazed and far off again. “Dreaming in the Web.” It was easy to tell when Dravite was off in the Web; he always got this blank, lost look. His body often went limp, as if in a faint.
“He shouldn’t do that so often,” another man, this time from the Diamond Clan, offered helpfully. “I know someone who went a little mad doing that.”
“My brother has always been a little mad,” Belhatir said. “And don’t your mothers ever tell you not to talk about a sleeping man? You’ll wake him up.”

He went to Dravite, and Dravite didn’t seem to notice when Belhatir sat down beside him. Dravite knew more about webbing than Belhatir did, although Belhatir was the Ankal’s son. His brother had always been more interested in it, as far back as Belhatir could remember, especially after Dravite’s near death experience with a herd of glassbeaks when they were both very young. Belhatir had never been interested in spirits or magic, but after last night there was something nagging Belhatir. If only he had known how to weave like Dravite did. Maybe he could have helped Jakovi. Maybe he wouldn’t have felt so useless.

“Hey.” Belhatir shoved Dravite’s shoulder as Belhatir sat down beside his brother. “Dravite. Wake up. What are you doing without me? I want to play, too.”.
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[Dravite]

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Self-awareness was heightened whenever the man found himself lost deep within the web. The tiny hairs on his arms and nape prickled when Belhatir’s footfalls came to him like the tide lapping against the shore. Dravite, however, ignored the approach in favour of what he saw with his eyes closed. The visions pictured across the webbing came like a dream, replying the events of the morning as if he had been there to witness them in the flesh.

A rake of young colts tested their stamina against one another on the plain while the mares grazed on the lush spring grass. Beyond them a drift of wild pigs used their noses to turn up earth in search of bulbs and tasty roots, and on the edge of a shallow pond a mother duck was teaching her ducklings to swim.

Dravite currently found himself watching a stray coyote closing in on an unsuspecting hare when Belhatir smacked him on the shoulder, jolting him from his trance-like state. He blinked and saw the earth underfoot before looking up in the direction the assault had come from to see Belhatir there.

“I want to play too,” the man badgered, just as Dravite used to do in the reverse when they were boys.

“I’m not playing, I’m just checking out the area,” Dravite lied.

He had been playing. In a sense the web was like an endless playground, taking him further and further away each time; the charm of the web was an easy temptation for such an adventurous soul. “Have you ever tried before?”

Dravite was referring to the web but didn’t like to speak about it out loud, even when they were only surrounded by other members of their race. The Drykas webbing was a secret that outsiders knew little about, if anything; Dravite wanted to keep it that way. The man didn’t know if he would be able to teach Belhatir enough to help him see the thin blue lines of the web, but he could explain what he knew, what he had seen. “Sit, tell me what you know.” .
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[Mahaleth]

Belhatir didn't know anything. There must have been days when the Ankal, his father, attempted to teach him webbing, or hunting, or fighting, or something--anything--useful. Where had his mind been, then? Somewhere out in the Sea of Grass or further out in the cities and on the ocean where the sun glinted and strange birds flocked across the sky. Or in bed, still, with a young man's legs wrapped around his waist, the two of them snoring gently in answer to each other. Or hating Belhaur so much that he was deaf to his father and all the vitriol that came with every lesson.

So now he knew nothing.

Belhatir sat down beside his brother and shrugged. "Nothing," he said, "except that you and Taloker spend too much time in it. That's what everyone says." Belhatir sat on his elbows and chewed on a bit of grass. The sky above them was a big, blue eye. The ground below seemed to breathe.

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[Dravite]

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Just like the grasslands, the Web had its own beauty and dangers. Spending too much time in the web was considered unsafe. Many were captivated by the charm or the web, and some spent so much time there that they never returned to the conscious world, and eventually passed over. Dravite would never be one of those people… at least he thought, if he told himself this enough, perhaps it would be true; but people were starting to take notice; he like his grandfather, was getting a name for himself. ‘Spider’ some of the Windborne warriors had started to call him. ‘Look at him, chasing sweet nothings across the web again,’ one of them had said.

Belhatir joined him at ground level and admitted that he knew nothing about webbing. Dravite wondered where his friend’s mind had been all those times Belhaur had taken him out for one on one lessons. As the Ankal’s son, he should have known more than most. Dravite looked at Belhatir for a long while, neglecting his Watch duties to tell his friend a thing or two.

He sat and thought about all he knew regarding Drivankali. The web was a vast arrangement of spun djed that tied the living into the weave to both keep track of them and share information. Even their striders were a part of the web, making them easier to find when their grazing took them away from camp. He sighed, his lessons would not be as graceful or well put as Taloker’s, or Belhaur, but what little Dravite could put into words for Belhatir, he would. “The web can be big or small. It can stretch across land for miles and miles, from sea to mountain. It can be tied to an object like a book or weapon; even Dreamer, your strider is a part of the web.”

Aris, their group commander, moved around The Serenity Tree on horseback, pointing his gaze at the pair. “Dravite, do you see anything on the web?”

Guilty that he had stopped searching, Dravite peered over his shoulder at Aris and lied, “Just trying to concentrate.”

The senior Watchman bowed his head in a quick nod and had his strider canter away from the tree to see how the other recruits were doing. When Dravite was sure the group was out of earshot he continued the lesson. “All of us are tied to the web at birth. Those who manipulate the web can tie their own or other people’s djed into its strands.”

He knew Belhatir wasn’t going to be able to use the web after one lesson and a brief rundown of facts. It had taken Dravite weeks to learn how to slip into a trance that allowed him to see the glowing blue strands, months to follow the woven guidelines, and years to see the ghost like memories it stored. He wanted to tell his friend to try and listen to Belhaur, but he knew the history between the two of them. “When we get back from the city in the summer, we will seek out a proper teacher for you. I’m sure Endrykas will have a master webber with some time on his hands, or we could pay.”

The sound of hooves thundered towards The Serenity Tree from behind them and Dravite got to his feet; perhaps Aris or one of his recruits had spotted something. Dravite looked back at Belhatir and offered a hand to help him up. As he took his brother’s palm he pulled him to his feet and whispered. “You must never talk about the web to outsiders. It is sacred to our people, the less they know about it, the better protected we are.” .
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[Mahaleth]

Belhatir sat in the grass, half-listening to his brother and half-listening to the wind as it rustled through the leaves on top of the Serenity Tree. They seemed to gossip and laugh with each other, telling secrets about the Drykas and all the people that passed through the Sea of Grass, dead or alive. Dappled shadows played over Belhatir and Dravite's sun burned arms, like windmarks that were alive and always changing.

"All of us are tied to the Web at birth," Dravite said. Belhatir swore it sounded familiar, an echo of Belhaur's teachings. It must have been a comfort to most of the Drykas, to know that they could always be found. Dravite's life, after all, had been saved a few times as a child because of Taloker or Belhaur's peering into the Web. But for Belhatir, it made the Sea of Grass and the circular migration they made over it seem all the more claustrophobic. Dravite meant to say that at any minute Belhaur could look into the web and sense with his feelers where Belhatir was, what he was doing, and who he was with, whether he was drinking with someone from another pavilion or in another man's bed. If that were the case, then Belhatir understood why his father looked at him always in the corner of his eye. Never face-to-face, the two of them never meeting gazes as if there were some kind of shameful secret between the two of them.

"You must never talk about the web to outsiders," Dravite said. The rataplan of Striders and Dravite's voice woke Belhatir out of his daydream. "It is sacred to our people, the less they know about it, the better protected we are." Dravite helped Belhatir up. Belhatir took Dravite's forearm and yanked himself up off the ground, a little more forcefully than he meant to. The both of them stumbled, and Dravite went on.

"Don't worry," Belhatir said, bending to pick up his throwing axes and secure them in their halters. "I probably know less about it than they do."

"Come, Windborne," one of the men, a few yards away, called. "We've found something." Belhatir whistled for Dreamer who, like her rider, was prone to wandering away and had found herself in a small patch of flowering weeds, her ankles surrounded by small white butterflies. Dreamer's ears pricked as she looked up. Her tail swished as if her rider were a minor annoyance, and then she cantered to his side. Belhatir took hold of the yvas with one hand and, the muscles in his arms flexing, hopped on to the mount. He swept his hair out of his face, clicked his tongue against the roof of his mouth, and rode Dreamer to where the recruits were gathered in tall grass. They leaned over the heads of their striders to better see what was there.

The rank, cloying stench of rotten meat smacked Belhatir in the face before he saw the grisly remains of what had been a woman lying in the tall grass. Belhatir drew his arm over his mouth, brows bending together in disgust. It had to have been a woman; the hair was long and blonde and lustrous in the sun, even in death. There were strange clothes and armbands on her, a foreigner, but the corpse had been stripped of anything else that had had any kind of value. No jewelry, no satchel. A black mass of flies were crawling around in her still open mouth, the jaw unhinged, the eyes open but empty, her face frozen in a silent, neverending scream of terror. The lower half of her body was picked nearly clean to the bone.

"What did this?" Belhatir heard himself say. He thought again of Jakovi, saw again the doll-body of that little boy in his arms. His stomach roiled.

Aris galloped in from behind them, and unlike Belhatir and many of the other new recruits, didn't flinch. His face remained stony and impassive, but Belhatir imagined he saw a twitch of either fear or disgust in the corner of his mouth. Belhatir thought he knew what Aris was thinking: this wasn't just some wild animal or a glassbeak attack. It was too clean, and it was too close to the Spring Grounds for any of them to sleep well that night.

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[Dravite]

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Dravite watched Dreamer trot over to Belhatir in response to the man’s whistle. He often wished Cree would come to such a call and tried once again to no avail. Cree was as stubborn as he is round, growing fatter and fatter on the spring grass after a mild winter. Dravite, still nursing a wound on his right forearm, walked up to the buckskin stallion that merely spun away from him, moving just out of reach. “Come on, Cree, not today,” the man sighed as Belhatir rode off to join the others.

The two of them danced for a while in the dappled light of The Serenity Tree, man chasing Strider and sometimes the reverse. When Dravite finally hooked the fingers of his left hand into the yvas he tried to still the horse, talking to him in a calm, gentle tone of voice. “Good, good, stay.”

Catching the horse was one thing, throwing a leg over now that he was forced to use his left arm was another. Without a leg-up Dravite had found this to be a difficult task to accomplish. He jumped against the horse’s side, trying to get enough air to throw his torso over the Strider’s back and get his leg over that way but Cree wouldn’t stand still. Perhaps it was the wind or the way the shadows moved across the ground, Dravite thought before leading the animal out into the sun.

Cree made an impatient sound and scratched the earth with his hoof, turning up dirt and dust. His nostrils flared and his ears went back as he threw his head up and down, nodding. Dravite stepped back from the irritated Strider and looked him over, taking note of the direction his ears were pointed, observing how flat they seemed and thought this looked very out of character for the usually content stallion. “Cree… What is it?”

Spooked, the animal charged forward and stopped at the edge of the tall grass to look back at the rider he had abandoned, as if torn. He stomped and raked at the ground again, but Dravite, confused by the unusual behaviour, did not take heed. Instead he stood staring at his mount and folded his arms. “You know I am this close to turning you into sausages.”

The branches overhead groaned. A quick moving shadow was cast across the ground and a gust of air, strong enough to cause the man to step forward to catch himself, almost had Dravite on his knees. Dravite heard something that resembled the sound of a rooster flapping his wings and clutched his spear. There was a light thudding sound behind him as whatever it was that had sprung out of the tree, moved to stand upon the ground.

Cree’s eyes shot wide and the hairs on Dravite’s neck stood on end as his strider summoned forth a war-cry that echoed across the plain and saw birds dart from their nests in the tall grass. The Drykas man was shoved from behind and let go of his spear to catch himself, rolling in the dust to land on his back. Stunned, he finally caught a glimpse of what, or who had attacked him.

A young, winged man stood with his pointed teeth bared and claw like fingers curled. His flesh was pale and grey. His skin was stretched tightly over an emaciated frame and all of his muscle had wasted away. Obviously famished, the young Zith youth had strayed from his colony in search of food and gone half-mad with starvation. Drool ran down over his chin through the gaps in his teeth and he skulked towards Dravite with a wild look in his eyes.

Struck dumb, the Drykas man had lost his voice, but crawled backwards on his hands towards his strider at the edge of the grass. As the Zith jumped forward, Dravite was shadowed by his charging mount as the horse leapt over the man to come between them. As Cree rose up on his strong hindquarters, he lashed out with his front legs, catching the youth’s right wing. The Zith hissed painfully as a bone in his wing snapped under the weight of the strider’s falling hoof, leaving him grounded.

Cree, not fond of bravery or retaliation, turned quickly, bucking at the air behind him as he shot into the long grass and raced towards the mounted recruits, leaving his rider once more to fend for himself. The horseman moved his hand to the hilt of his dagger and looked forward to where his spear had fallen, positioned between man and beast. The two sized each other up; it seemed the Zith also had ideas about claiming the bone-spear to use in his defence. .
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[Mahaleth]

Belhatir heard Cree screaming, the sound hair-raising and eerily human. Without pausing to think, Belhatir gripped Dreamer's yvas and turned her around. They charged back to where Dravite had been. Belhatir's mind wasn't able to register what he was looking at, didn't know what manner of animal was threatening his brother. Belhatir, holding on to the yvas with one hand and pulling one axe out of its halter with another, only knew that his brother was in danger, and that he had to act quick.

Time seemed to move too slowly. Belhatir's knuckles were white on the yvas, holding on as hard as he could so he wouldn't fall off. His right hand gripped the axe, and when Belhatir raised his arm over his head he felt as if he were moving through water. Instead of throwing the axe Belhatir swung it at the young zith's head, missed, and rolled off of his strider on to the zith's back and its broken wing. Belhatir's jaw collided with the zith's shoulder. He rolled, his legs going over his head, and then landed on his knees in the grass in front of the drooling zith. They looked at each other for a few seconds, long enough for Belhatir to see the strange, silvery fur over the youth's chest and back. On his arms, long black fur as if he were wearing some form of armbands. The zith's eyes were bright yellow. Intelligent. More human than animal.

The last thing that Belhatir noticed were its claws. He saw them gleam just as the zith attacked. Then he heard the sound of ripping cloth or flesh at his chest and jumped back, just as the zith lunged forward to do something gruesome with Belhatir's stomach, or worse.
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[Dravite]

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It was right there, just a lunge away. He could reach it before the young Zith if he acted now! Suddenly the grass at his back was alive with the hammering of racing hooves, Dravite just managing to roll out of the way of Dreamer as she sprung from the tall grass with Belhatir on her back. The actions that followed went unseen by the diving Drykas male as he jumped forward to clutch his father’s bone-spear while the Zith was distracted.

When he looked up Belhatir had managed to get from his Strider to the Zith’s back, only to be thrown and bowled across the dry ground. As the creature moved to swipe at Belhatir, Dravite took the opportunity to jab at the Zith’s back, piercing the stretched skin with the head of his spear. He fumbled then, almost losing the weapon as the Zith made a sudden move to turn, almost taking Dravite with him.

The Drykas man managed to hold his weapon, withdrawing it only to stab at the creature again, this time driving the end of his weapon into the winged man’s gut. This only served to anger the beast, who closed his clawed hands about the end of the weapon, threatening to snap it in half. Dravite pulled back with all his might to reclaim his weapon, and not a moment too soon as it seemed the rest of the group had finally shown up, firing arrows and swinging swords.

Dravite ducked clear of the chaos, moving away from the inner circle and hang back on the outskirts where he wouldn’t be run over by a charging Strider, or struck mistakenly with a weapon wielded by one of his peers. As the dust was stirred up and the fight went on, Dravite found himself paying less and less attention to the strange, winged creature, and more to what he could not see; where had Belhatir gone?
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[Mahaleth]

There was shouting and the thunder of hooves on the ground. The rest of the men came running up to the fray, swinging their own weapons or shooting arrows over the zith's head. In the chaos, one of the arrows grazed Belhatir's shoulder. Dreamer circled back, and Belhatir raised his good arm to grab the yvas and try to get out of the line of friendly fire. The zith, knowing that he was outnumbered, jumped and flapped its wings. It reached a few feet in the air, just enough to reach a high branch in the Serenity Tree. It stumbled, wavered like a drunken bird, and hissing and cussing in some strange language tried again. The trees were disturbed by its flight; every now and then the treetops rumbled with the zith's weight, until it finally was out of hearing range.

Belhatir let the yvas go a few yards away from the circle of Watch recruits. He tried to roll into the dirt as painlessly as he could, but caught the landing on the wound on his left shoulder. Breathless, Belhatir tumbled on to his back and let blades of grass tickle his ears. He looked up at the blue sky and tried to ignore the slow, steady trickle of blood on his chest and shoulder. Tried to imagine that it was just rain. Warm, pleasant summer rain.

"Petching vagik," he groaned after a while, gripping his shoulder. "Shyke eating piece of shyke."


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