Valerie's Writings

Author’s note: To go with the theme of “namelessness,” I decided not to use names for most of the characters… including Soren. I refer to him as “the child” and Ike as “the boy.” I know it’s confusing, but that’s just the way I like it!

-

It seemed he was always being beaten, chased and harassed by some form of local militia, often the kind that had nothing better to do with their time than pick on homeless children. He knew they regarded him as little more than a fly, an insect to toy with perhaps, then shoo away. Today he had been too weak to fight them with wind or fire, and he had barely managed to scramble away from underneath them. Somewhere in the countryside, his pulse still fast from running and being chased by their shouts, he stumbled and kicked through the long grass.

He struggled to contain the need to spit or vomit, his saliva sour with blood, for he could not afford to spoil his clothing—his only—any further. The inside of his mouth felt raw, and he prodded the injuries endlessly with his tongue. He was sure by now the red bruises festooning his knees and elbows counted more than a dozen. Across his stomach, like slippery moss, he felt blood crawling.

He no longer cared. These were only extra wounds to patch, to slow him down. He was not afraid of or angry at this treatment, or even ashamed. For what excitement it had provided, it was well worth the pain. And he had lasted long enough; he could no longer deny the necessity of eating. For certain, his misery was lessened from this morning. The hunger was dull now, pain taking precedence of his senses. Soon, he could sleep without worrying overly about death.

Close to the orange horizon, he was approaching a sprawl of buildings. The nearest seemed to be the largest, a barn-shaped structure. Even from this distance it was in notable disrepair, a typical feature of the country buildings. The roof, crowned with crows and roosting doves, was shabbily patched together; ivy wreathed the walls, and tall, tangled weeds crowded wildly at the house’s feet. But with its jutting height the building was grand and menacing. At its top the silhouette of a cross stood out. The child understood. If he went there and fell somewhere near its entrance, they would help him. Churches were bustling places—just now he watched the great doors open, releasing a few dark-clothed villagers who hobbled away in the other direction—and the Crimean people loved their Goddess. Any minister would be ravaged with guilt if he did nothing to help a hurt child collapsed at the door.

Though he hated priests and cursed the Goddess, he would go there in order to survive. Compared to fighting and robbing and running, supplication was a simple enough task. And he was not obligating himself to anything. He would take whatever hospitality he could and in the morning, drift away.

He had been busy attending to his feet when a rusty squeezing noise jolted him to his senses. The doors had opened again and two children, a boy and a girl, stood on the steps in the yellow light of the church, smiling and facing a white-robed priest. There was some conversation, and then the boy turned his back, waving. As the doors shut once again, the two climbed down the steps and started down the path.

To the child’s surprise they were not going in the direction of the village, but towards where he stood watching. They did not seem to notice him yet, their heads turned to each other in conversation. The child felt horror at passing them on the street like this, at suffering their ridicule. As a habit, he ducked into the shadows, eyeing them warily. Then, with a surge of panicky energy, he threw himself through a wall of bushes. Behind the cover of the bushes he could still see them, their animated shadows flickering across the dust, and hear them talk. The young girl was skipping across the dusty path, as if showing off a new toy. She laughed in delight and chattered eagerly, while the tall, quieter boy trailed ploddingly behind her.

The boy had a sword, the child noticed immediately. And the metallic chinking as he plodded along was undoubtedly the racket of coins in his pockets. The girl, too, seemed well-off; both children wore colourful capes and gleaming ribbons, and their hair was perfectly groomed. The child studied their faces as they drew nearer: the girl was bright-eyed, her skin fair and spotless; the boy’s eyes, more reserved, followed the ground.

As he watched them the child decided simultaneously that he had had enough of priests, and that this—these two wealthy children—would make an easy game to play. He wiped his lips on the sleeve of his cloak. Then, with quick fingers he unknotted the garment, shedding it on the grass, and fished his knife from one of its pockets. Unsheathing the blade, he bent out of the bushes behind them and waited. The girl was closer to him. Good—she had leaned down to look at something buried in the dust, pointing and calling back to the other. And then better—the boy followed her, crouching nearby.

With practiced movements and a look full of dark purpose, the child brought out an arm, used it to trace a rigid pattern in the air, then swept it in an arc, skyward. At the precise moment he felt a tingling resistance forming in the tips of his fingers, he whipped down his arm. Instantaneously, the tops of the bushes lining the path flattened, a dust cloud kicked up, and a fierce gall tore into both of the children. The girl let out a shrill cry and was slammed helplessly to the ground. The boy, who had got down on his hands and knees, shouted for her.

The child grinned at his work. It had not been easy. Nature was fickle and treacherous; one must force it to work, impressing it with his might, or it would not obey. He was proud of what he had accomplished.

He could have left now, with the two children terrorized and disorientated. He’d had his fill of entertainment for the day. And he wanted to avoid confrontation with that sword at the boy’s hip. It was not a small or toyish-looking blade. Even with those clumsy hands and spindly arms of his, that boy could well do some damage with a blade of such length.

But still, the child stood there in the middle of the path, as though challenging the boy to rise in revenge and strike him down. It was as if an inner roar of rage had blurred his sensibilities. What was he doing? Something kept him riveted to the spot. He looked on at his hapless victims with a haughty expression, completely devoid of fear or remorse.

Perhaps it was the knife in his hand… it had been used too little.

He dashed out without a further thought and seized the girl at her shoulder, pinning her to the ground. She cried out again, struggling, until he flashed the knife to silence her. He held her firmly, unfazed even as the boy with the sword fixed on him angrily.

“What do you think you’re doing?” the boy bellowed.

It came loudly enough to startle the child, who had imagined the boy quiet and timid.

He merely looked back. His mind was blank. He had no plan to speak of, was only holding the girl and the knife for a thrill and perhaps some gold pieces. The boy glared threateningly at him as he rose to his feet. His shoulders were quite wide and sturdy-looking for his age.

The girl was whimpering indistinctly, her skin shivering under the child’s sweating fingers.

“Don’t think you can threaten us, you dog!”

The voice of the boy with the sword boomed across the silent, darkening fields.

The child did not respond, but pressed his knee harder into the girl’s legs, and drew the knife closer to her throat. She squealed.

“Brother, don’t let him hurt me. Don’t let him hurt me!”

The boy impulsively grabbed at the hilt of his sword.

“Let go of my sister, you little—!”

The child pretended not to have heard him, though he was intimidated.

“Drop everything you have,” he said slowly, in his dry, crackling voice. “If you listen, I will leave you alone.”

He imagined the grime and blood and stink on him, the red and murderous eyes, his gashed arms, and felt assured he was a rogue. Though he was young, he had tried to make his voice sound as rough and threatening as possible.

The boy breathed loudly, clearly incensed. The girl whined to him to help her, both her shoulders and her voice shuddering. The child violently tightened his grip.

There was a wheezing noise, rusty hinges turning. The child looked over at the church, shocked to realize its doors were opening. Someone was now shouting at them, moving closer. The child felt a shock in his feet – the urge to run.

“Let her go!” the boy snarled, as fierce as ever. “Let her go now or I swear I’ll kill you! I will!”

The child’s mind was abuzz. He didn’t know if he should run now, or threaten the girl some more, or cause some distraction with wind or fire. But there was not enough time. He heard a sword being drawn, leaving him not a second more to think. With a furious yell, the boy charged at him, the steel of his blade flashing through the air.

The child panicked and, giving a rough push to the girl, leapt over the hedges to run. His mind had turned completely blank. He was terrified. As he fought through the dense grassy field, scrambling to get as far away as possible, he could hear the sod being ripped up behind him. The boy was hunting him down mercilessly. The noise he was making screaming at his back sounded like a storm, all curses and threats. The landscape was alien to the child, and he ran directionless, his only need to escape the blade he felt was about to cut through his back. His heart seemed to be popping, his blood was surging and crashing onto his skull. It was making him feel faint. He wanted to throw up and be still.

Each time he thought of giving himself up, the boy’s footsteps would catch up  behind him and the shouts would tear murderously at his ears. He would not give up. The child pushed his legs harder and harder. Endlessly he ran. He tripped over ditches and furrows he could not see in the growing darkness.

At his back, the boy roared with vengeful rage.

“Think you can run, do you!” he snarled.

The child was beginning to wheeze and grow light-headed; he couldn’t keep this up. He felt himself trip over a loose, tumbling rock and for a moment he thought he would fall to the ground. And then he heard a whir of metal coming towards him and something very hard hurled itself onto the back of his skull.

-

He was not dead like he imagined in his dreamlike unconsciousness; he could hear a faint swell of voices in hymn through the ceiling. His eyes opened, but the piercing brightness from above only caused a stab of pain. He smelled candlewax and decaying burlap and, just like that dim and fading memory he had of the old sage’s cottage, a cloying musk of chalk and potions.

His back was on a plank of hard wood, a pillow pinching his hair under his too-heavy head. Someone’s hand lay limp and motionless on the bare skin of his shoulder. But for his unfailing self-control he would have started with surprise. He forced himself to ignore it, despite his rising pulse. It would not be wise to give away that he was awake until he had learned more about who was with him.

The room was quiet. Only the ghostly wafting of the chorus beyond the ceiling, at times just a faint vibration in the walls, made any noise at all. For a moment the child wondered if he should just lay here and let himself rest in peace for a while, the warmth of the indoors thawing his frostbitten soles and fingertips. He could just imagine how nice it would be to shut his eyes and allow those pleasant thoughts to drift through him like this, undisturbed.

Someone was speaking; it was the man whose hand was on his shoulder. The voice sounded intentionally subdued, but it still had an undeniable grace and presence, a mannerly air that marked the speaker as a member of the clergy.

“What ever made you do such a thing?” said this man with the graceful voice, who seemed to actually be quite young. “This poor boy. It may not be my place to judge, but I don’t think you should have hit him so! He has enough wounds as it is.”

There was a brief silence as the other person in the conversation took this in. And then he heard a familiar voice, the voice of that shade-eyed boy, who spoke in a sulky, angry murmur.

“I didn’t have a choice, I told you. You would’ve done the same if Mist had been attacked right in front of you by this – this…”

The blue-haired boy had moved closer to him, so that he could be seen, and the child felt a surge of both hatred and fear coursing through his body. He immediately fixed the boy with a glare.

The boy caught his eye and stared back, his eyes narrowed and his mouth screwed shut in an angry scowl. Now neither of them could pay any attention to other person in the room, the priest in the white robes. The priest was just now clucking his tongue, oblivious to the tension in the room.

“You needn’t have smacked him with your sword, you know!” the priest said in a cheerfully reproving tone. “You just wanted a piece of the—ah!”

The child jerked away with an unexpected movement that was astonishingly fast. He crouched on top of the bed and backed away towards the wall. He was a captured criminal here. Unless he freed himself as soon as possible, all there would be awaiting him was his judgment before the church holies.

The priest rose to his feet, goggling him with both surprise and fear. The shade-eyed boy merely continued to fix him with the same steady glare as earlier.

The priest held out his hand in an appeasing gesture. He smiled nervously, his shoulders shrunken back and his raised arm trembling as though he were offering it to a ferocious beast.

“Are you all right, child?” he said, his voice tremulous.

But the boy with the sword was bearing down on the child, his expression unwavering and firm.

“Don’t try to win him over, Rhys,” he said in a low growl. “He won’t fall for that. He’s a mage.”

The child jumped off the bed, defiantly. He had to steady himself against a bookcase. The walls of his mind whirled dizzily; his skull and chest were pounding. The priest was approaching him, his palms upturned, face cringing. The child stopped him with one fierce look, then turned to the ceiling.

A stream of the setting sun rippled at its edge: there was a barred, slit window. It was low enough but uselessly small. The door, the only exit, was far across the room. To reach it he would have to get through both the priest and the boy, nearly impossible. The boy’s fingers were grasping the hilt of his sword.

The priest reached out at the child. “What do you need?” he asked, the tremor still in his voice. “I want to help you.”

The child was not listening. He had a memory of being similarly trapped, crouching in so dank and windowless a basement it was more dungeonlike. The smell was the same, of festering mildew and potions, and the priests had crowded around him too, a bustle of questions and reprimanding scowls. He had responded with muteness, locking away the feelings in him that were so wrong. As the hot anger lashed through him, he had imagined ripping into them, making blood splatter, the priests cowering and scattering away.

This priest was young and eager to help him. “Do you have somewhere to go?” he asked tentatively. The child thought him a fool. He only wanted to be left alone.

He stared at the floor, sickened. His hand, grasping the lacquered bookcase, was sweating, its fingers trembling. Each time he urged himself to run or summon some diversion with his hands, he stopped short, unable to bear even the thought of motion. The cut across his stomach was stinging him; it had opened while he was running, bleeding afresh, and hurt with every movement. He wanted to sleep, not remembering the last time he had done so.

“You don’t want to sleep alone in the darkness?” the priest asked. “Look at how dark it is outside already.”

The child felt himself weakening, and cursed himself for it. He had little idea of what he intended to do, without energy to fight even the priest, much less the boy and his sword.

The priest was asking the boy, “Does he know our language? I don’t think he understands us.”

“No, he does. I heard him speak. The dog tried to rob us.”

“Do you have a name?” the priest asked the child, who ignored him.

The boy, seemingly tired of this, decided to retire. “My sister’s probably crying,” he said. He warned the priest to be careful and left.

When the door banged shut, the priest looked even more flustered than before, staring speechlessly in its direction.

“Please… sit down and relax,” he said finally. “I’ll have my father come to see you, all right? He’s a mage, so he’ll be better at this than I am.” Casting a concerned glance over his shoulder, he too left the room.

Left alone, the child finally felt his will to struggle and fight ebbing away. Listlessly, he sat down on the bed, squeezing and rubbing his bare arms. His skin was crossed with scars, most old enough to have faded to pale, barely visible welts. But on his shoulder where the priest’s hand had been, the skin had been ripped off, replaced by a dirty and scalded-red ooze which smarted constantly. He must have crashed onto something sharp during his fall.

He laid onto his back on the soft bed and closed his eyes. A wave of sweet, rare comfort washed over him, a decidedly pleasant feeling that, at this moment, he wouldn’t mind keeping.

His thoughts drifted to himself, hazily, as he began to descend into sleep. About how he was too sick to fight anymore. About how, soon, he might fade away from this existence altogether.

But maybe that was why he fought and struggled and defied, because he knew he was dying.

-

A few mornings passed.

One dawn the child was wearing the young priest’s clothing and eating with him. He no longer wanted to leave. Every time a villager opened the doors, a chilling blast of wind punched through from outside, and he would bow his head away from it, as if shielding himself.

At night he buried his head into his pillow but sleep would not come to him. He felt the dizzying sensation of motion all the time, of flight coursing through him. When he did sleep, he dreamt of running, running as his eyes swept back through the darkness, searching for his tormentors. He dreamt of torches that sprung from the shadows with savage hisses, of clanging iron boots chasing his footsteps as he sped down dusk-blue cobblestones, frightened out of his wits. He dreamt of the agonizing pain of an arrow that had ripped into his side one wintry day, and the gushing, warm torrents of blood that had cascaded from his body onto the frosted earth.

He did not want to die. After a night of contemplation, he was convinced he had confronted that boy with the sword only so that he might be killed. He had wanted, if only for an instant, to feel the release of death. The next time he did something like that, he probably would.

The priest had the name of “Rhys.” It was quaint and girly, fitting the slight priest. Not that the child ever spoke a word to him. He was seventeen or eighteen years of age and his life with his two parents, compared to the villagers, was one of luxurious comfort. Apparently training to be a healer, he spent considerable time at work on the child, but still the child hated him. When he had no choice, he submitted to the priest’s hands, his eyes closed, not opening them until he was alone. He refused to answer the priest’s questions, glared when he was addressed, and only cooperated so he could be fed and left in peace.

Rhys was weak and manageable, but his father, a bearded, barrel-chested mage of some accomplishment, frightened the child. He had seen the imposing man squinting at his forehead, at a moment when his mark—the red, swirl-shaped tattoo of the Branded—had been exposed from under the usual mess of his hair. The child had quickly glanced away, but he was certain Rhys’s father knew, as he did, what the mark meant. That he was Untouchable.

It was the mage who approached him now, his black eyes scowling down through his glasses. He told the child he had better leave. “This is not a hospital,” he said. “My son has done enough for you.”

Rhys protested, but weakly, like the whining of a fledgling. His father silenced him.

Without hesitation, the child nodded and stood from his chair. Though it did not hurt him, he sensed he was hated and had meant to storm out in a flurry. But some kind of gentleness restrained him. He paused to face the young priest who had so selflessly aided him. Swallowing, he kept his eyes to the floor and spoke in a quite rasp.

“You saved my life. I am grateful.”

The priest, hearing these first words, got up in surprised delight. “What’s your name?” he asked.

The child shrugged rather than say he didn’t know. He was wary of the glare Rhys’s father still fixed on him, and, needing to escape it, rushed to the door as fast as he could.

-

Out of the church and its cloying, musty fragrance, the child hurried to the hedge where he had shed his cloak two or three days ago. Thankfully it had not rained during that time and the cloak was only a little damp with dew; when he retrieved the ragged thing, he pulled it over his shoulders and knotted it again under his neck. Then he turned in the direction of the fields. It was bright morning, so he had no worry for time. He began to roam the vast fields, searching through the dry mud for his knife.

Soon, every step looked the same—the ground compact with frost, the composting leaves rustling through the tall, yellow grass—and he felt his senses numbing.

The questions were bubbling into his mind. The questions that came always, in a gasping, breathless flurry, when he was alone and afraid. He had no where to go to, no shelter or friendly face. If he continued walking along this path, who would find him and interrupt his silence, who would tempt him with their food? He did not want to be in pain in the darkness, it was the worst. A few more nights of it and he would perish. Before he had woken, he would be cold and dead.

His knife was still lost when he recognized a noise behind him. Someone was padding across the field, ripping up bits of dirt as he went. Almost as soon as he turned to look, the child jumped.

“It really is you!”

It was the boy. The boy with the sword was after him, frowning sternly, like a hound pinning a scent.

The child bolted, terrified. Behind him he heard the boy’s shouts, the words jumbled in their speed and volume.

“What are you doing? Stop running!”

The words echoed across the fields, his voice booming.

The child ran. He had had a suspicion, when he first woke in the church, that the boy would have cut his throat had it not been a holy place. The scowl, the brooding quietness and booming voice: the boy was a demon out for revenge.

“What are you scared of? I’m unarmed! Come back!”

The boy was not lying. Without the weight of his sword, the boy was running a lot faster and would catch up to him in no time. Finally, he gave up, and slowed down until he could hear the boy panting beside him.

The boy was leaning on his spread knees as he panted breathlessly. He looked, to the child, like an angry bull who would charge without warning.

They looked at each other cautiously, neither certain that the other wouldn’t make another sudden move.

“Where are you going?” the boy said at last, more quietly than he’d expected.

The child looked away, unable and unwilling to answer.

The boy looked away as well. When he spoke, his voice was surprisingly soft.

“You don’t have parents, I know,” he said.

The child looked up. It was the tone of understanding that surprised him most. The expression on the boy’s face was hard and concentrative, serious. He was squinting into the distance, and it was difficult to tell what he was thinking.

“I live with orphans, so I know how they tend to act. Quiet, but strong. They don’t trust anyone, don’t like being interfered with.” The shade-colored eyes moved to look at him, and as if he had expected to be invisible, the child felt himself shrinking back with an uncertain ripple of fear. “Isn’t that right?”

The child felt his strong distrust slipping away. It was fading to nothing with frightening speed, forced to collapse in on itself, like a breath he could no longer hold in his stomach.

The boy stepped forward at once, making him look in surprise, and the strong fingers alighted on his arm.

“Listen,” the boy breathed to his shoulder, “I want to give you a chance. So don’t run away.”

The child shrugged his hand away with irritation, keeping his lips firmly closed together.

“You’re a mage,” the boy persisted, “an incredibly good mage. Right? That day, that thing you hit us with… that was Wind, wasn’t it? Wind like I’ve never seen.”

The child still kept away from him, afraid of a quick, treacherous blow as soon as he gave in. All this talk was just trickery, distraction.

But the boy was grinning at him now. “That spell even got me down on my knees, it’s got to be plenty strong!”

The child was confused with these words, his suspicion reaching a height.

“Look, I’ll tell it to you straight. We’ve been in search of recruits who can use spells like that for a long time. You would be perfect, I know it. You’ve got to join us.”

“Join what?” said the child, before he could stop himself.

The boy’s eyes widened. “Mercenaries. We’ve been here a long time.”

The child could not believe him. Mercenaries. Was it possible? Real mercenaries? He shivered, and although the boy kept on yammering at him, he was suddenly not listening.

It had been his greatest desire, ever since he was much younger and more innocent, to join a mercenary corps… to be able to use his destructive powers for profit, or even for good. He had longed for a chance at real revenge on those he hated, those who had spilt his blood and given him scars.

His heart was pounding. He felt sick with joy. The moisture on his lips and throat vanished until they were so parched they felt like fossils.

The child gazed up at the boy, unable to express this. How could he? He still could not trust the boy, could not bind himself to a promise, exposing his desperate lack of everything. He could not believe there would be no tricks or exploitations. The prospect of working with an enemy was impossibly dangerous. To agree would be careless, and his life could end suddenly.

The boy spoke impatiently. “I promise you, I’ve forgotten our grudge.”

The child could not decide. He did not believe the boy’s assurances, and the desperation with which his heart sang to him only made him more cautious. He had been fine on his own, living on his instincts for years and years. He could not trust a stranger, a boy, who just moments and days ago, might have murdered him.

“If you live by terrorizing villagers,” the boy said finally, and rather gruffly, “you’re going to be in trouble with us mercenaries. I can tell you that for certain.” He shrugged as he turned away. “If you’d rather be a help instead of a target… you know what to do.”

The child forced himself not to follow as the boy left him, the shadows of his legs swinging across the field.

But, as the boy’s form grew into a distant black raisin against the horizon, terror gripped him with its full force. He saw himself wandering, scavenging for food like the crows in the fields, and he saw the black sightlessness of night.

He did not want to sleep with the cold hardness of stone prodding his back every night as he curled up on the filthy streets. He did not want to be near the stink of drunkards, urine and waste, and to live in it, to become one with it. He did not want to clutch his shivering thin body, his face whipped numb by the wind, fingers senseless, frost spidering in his hair. He did not want his words to only threaten, every pair of eyes detesting him and wishing him dead, a mute and nameless, cursed child. He did not want to rob men and women and children and murder them in desperation, struggling like beasts upon one another, throwing broken bodies down staircases and over bridges and cliffs. He did not want to long weakly for caring souls to save him, to feel whispered encouragement or a soft embrace rather than the same loud, blind pain of every day and every night.

He ran with the speed and breathlessness of one escaping from a nightmare. He could think of nothing to say when he reached the boy, panting and out of breath.

The boy grinned at the sight of him. The child hated him for giving him no choice, for forcing him to admit he had nothing, nothing in the world. He was reduced to following the boy like a beggar, a dog.

For a long time they did not speak. He heard only the crows, the rustling of the wind in the grasses, and the boy’s plodding footsteps ahead of him. He watched the boy as he walked straight and tall, unable to deny his admiration of the boy’s clear strength.

He noticed the boy had allowed him to walk behind, which he took as a gesture of trust. But his instincts still urged him not to trust, to keep himself alert and his spells at the top of his mind.

Later, the silence began to sound strange, and the child sunk into his own thoughts.

It was a long time before the boy said anything. Without even looking over his shoulder, he mumbled something that sounded unimportant.

“I’m Ike,” he said. “That’s what I’m called.”

The child nodded absently.

Another moment. “What about you?”

Keeping his lips firmly together, he shook his head.

Then he realized. He did have a name. He stopped in his tracks, and the boy looked back at him.

But it was a memory, ancient and painful. The name meant nothing; it was not a name, but nonsense, merely something affectionate he had been called. The one who had given it to him was not his father, nor his mother. It was the sage who had long ago taken him in… the man who had bought him for the promise he showed in magic. When the sage had died, there was no one to call him by name any more, and the child no longer thought of it. He hadn’t even remembered it until now.

The boy was smiling at him mischievously.

“If you don’t have a name, I’ll think of one for you.”

He had been nameless for seven years. Now, maybe, he had someone to call his name.

“It’s Soren,” he said, trying to smile back. “Please, call me Soren.”