Ed'yta unfurled the parchment like a merchant at the market, all slow anticipation and slower smile, but even as Konrad drew that very comparison in his own mind, he bought into it. The pavilion was ill-lit, but he could almost feel the colors bathe his face as the full breadth of the painting was revealed. So engrossed was he, at the pictures and images and symbols, that the gnarled finger poking into his vision was almost a surprise.
"This," the crone said, pointing to the bottom corner,
"was you."Konrad studied the little picture; emphasis on "little". A child, chubby limbs and short stature, playing with a ball of water that hovered between his hands. One element, a handful of symbols... but further away, up and to the side, was a young man. Taller, leaner, juggling what looked like fire and water, waves blue lines and crackling, jagged flames.
"An' this's me now?"
"Aye, seems like." Ed'yta nodded, as much to herself as to his question.
"That's your progress."
"But how? How did I get there? I mean, how does it work?"
"No-one knows, lad," the crone said with an infuriating shrug.
"Maybe the God of Water decided she was impressed, wanted a fine mage like your good self. Maybe the Fire God wanted to share you, try something else. Heh, not likely, though. Gods can be jealous sods, ain't they?"Infuriating or not, Konrad had to grin back at her. A woman after his own heart.
"Or maybe it's Fate! That today, or yesterday, that's when it'd happen. Or Destiny? From the day you got your djed, or even were born, it was set in stone." Konrad's smile began to die, but Ed'yta's was immovable. It was even growing, nourished even as his waned.
"Or maybe there's some other gods, who watch and judge and when you jumop through enough hoops, bish-bash-bosh, you can-"
"Youse have no idea, do ya?"
"Nope. Not really." Infuriating. Fearless. Chuckling.
"But if youse ask me? Which you are? It's practice. These tents, these hides-" she stroked the wall of the pavilion, tender and gentle, as one would for something old and much-loved
"-they listen. They watch. They whisper to me about the scarred walahk that can make fire. Throw around globs of it, even make clouds like those circus clowns who spit liquor and set it alight. You practice. You train yourself, and you train your djed."She was a mound of cloth and fabric again, broken only by a pointing finger and two glimlets buried under a scruff of dark hair.
"What happens when you train, lad? You don't just get better at one thing, what else?"Konrad looked back to the picture as he thought. The third picture, with another dark figure bearing a beard, sharp and bristly, trio of flame and wind and water circling him.
"I... Y'get better wiv' more'n jus' what you train wit'. Y'can use other things."
"Good lad." There was a flash of teeth in the mound. Incredible that one so old could still have all her teeth, with nary a one bearing the black or yellow that Konrad's mostly did.
"And if you're smart, and patient about it? You learn more... and more... until..."Her answer was another nod at the painting, and she could not ignore the avarious envy creeping into the young walahk's eyes as he saw the old man. Smallest of all the figures, bent and squat and bearded down to fuzzy knees, he was by far the most... colorful. Symbols and words surrounded him, but the four elements stood out. Each was as large as the child, and all dwarfed their smaller cousins on the parchment. Flame and water became inferno and wave; gust of wind and mound of dirt, instead were tornadoes and mountains. All chained to the man, symbols of his utter control.
"But you need to be careful, lad. As in all djed." He peered over the parchment, dragging his gaze and his thoughts away from such a future. Less than a year, and two elements were open to his will. What would another year hold? Or five? Or ten? How far could his power extend? But Trevin, long-dead and departed, chimed in, along with this living crone, far from Kenash. Patience. Caution.
"Overgiving, yeah? Avoid that shyke like the plague, I was told."
"Aye, you got good advice, there. But overgiving ain't something you avoid; it's something you invite, when you go too far. A man must be prudent, hmm? Can't go acting like some bloody amateur morpher, trying to be a panther when he can't even-"
"Wos'uh 'morpher'?"A chuckle from cracked lips, and Konrad realized just how many layers the woman was wearing.
A bad sign, he tod himself,
needing all that in this heat. The racking cough that followed only proved him right, or likely so, but Ed'yta forced herself onward, rattling throat instead emitting a raspy laugh after a while.
"Morphing. Never heard of that? Aye, well, Sunberth man like yourself, probably wouldn't be too familiar."
"I never-Who told yeh I was from-"
"Come now, lad." That smile again. That chuckle. Only there was layers to it, now. Like the glimlets of her eyes, dancing and mocking him silently.
"Live as long as I do, you'll see and hear most everything. Even that angry bloody accent of yours?"Konrad resisted the urge to demand further, remembering the two other Drykas in the room. Instead he cleared his throat and decided - rather naively - that the woman needed to be kept on track. Distracted. Yes. Because
that was likely.
"Morphing? Y'can... change into animals?"
"Something like that, yes. Living creatures." Ed'yta leaned forward, warm smile crinkling her face, slipping easily into the role of a storyteller.
"They will their djed into their skin... and make it what they want. Bat wings? Snake scales? Lion claws? Fish gills?" Old though she was, her fingers were still supple, and the crack of them made Konrad's shoulders bunch for the merest tick. She chuckled and the man was a boy again, for the same brief instant. All those stories of mages and wizards from his youth, turning into great reptiles and sea monsters, giant spiders and things that didn't even have names. Was that the key to them all? The root?
"Did yeh know about-"He spoke as he turned but when he did, no face was there to greet his words. The space Sloane had occupied was bare, just an empty cushion and the pavilion wall behind it. He'd heard her growled-out word after he spoke, but was already ignoring them as Ed'yta approached again. They were the petulant, ridiculous words of a child, and he was tired of her... endless defiance. Her pointless optimism. She needed to wake up and-
Leave?"Wh-One tick, aye?"
"Oh, pardon me, I'm s-"Konrad decided to skip what he was sure would be a blisteringly dry and witty response, and instead rose to his feet and strode to the door in a handful of ticks. Big bastard though he was, he could move fast when he wanted to. Maybe she'd only just left and was waiting outside. Probably just needed some air, to get away-
From you?She wasn't waiting. She wasn't there. There were Drykas and horses and a few carts and those strange sled-things that he hadn't learned the name for, but no matter where he craned his head or rested his eyes, there was no blonde hair. Nor pale skin and bright eyes. Konrad stamped down the urge to shout out her name, in case she was hiding elsewhere, but... no. Not clever.
Sure, go around yelling her name all over the city. Sure that'll go down well with her owners. But he did know where she would go. She had nowhere else, after all. And one foot had stirred that way, the first words of his speech to her forming in his head when-
He just didn't. His body wanted to, but his mind... well, that told him everything, didn't it? He'd been thinking with his meat too much, where she was concerned. His blood and his heart, if truth be told. Allowed the walls to be weakened, allow himself to get... familiar. It wasunwise, and now, as he stood there, Syna cast light on the truth of it.
"Better this way. F'both a' ya."A couple of passing folk wondered what the queer-looking walah was doing talking to himself in the street, but Konrad paid them no mind. There was room enough in there for him, after all. Now he was thinking clearly. No more room for dalliances or distractions from some girl he'd forget in a season.
"The intentions were wrong but it worked out."
The man wiped his jaw and swallowed dust and dry skin. This would what she needed, too. Nowhere and no-one to run to, leaving her only with those yobs at her pavilion. But where else could she go? There she would be fed, clothed, cared for. Even have children, and didn't all women want to whelp at some point? Well, all the better: she'd have all she could want, and one day, become a real Drykas, not just a breeder.
"And again, Hansel, thank you."
There was shuffling in the pavilion. Old, crotchety tones bandying words with shrill, young ones. Gods, that he had to walk back into that... he owed the girl for that, too. Leaving him alone to deal with those bloody people. But that thing... Morphing? That tickled him, in ways he would have scoffed at a year or two ago. All the things Ed'yta had mentioned, they could be possible. And he thought as he stood and soon her eyes were in his eyes and her words were there and-
"I know you're not going to hurt me, and I'm not afraid of you, no matter what you'd like to think."
"I still want you with me."
His hand closed into a fist. The words were silenced. The memory was banished. Shoved down and burned and buried. It was for the best, for them both. He didn't need the baggage and she didn't need him around her, a sword over her head just waiting to fall.
Konrad told himself that and he believed it. He believed it all the way back into the pavilion.
Don't Make Me Repeat Myself.
