The Melding

Beginning

Fallon felt rested when he awoke again. He was able to focus on the face above him. Not his dead mother. Another woman. Thirties. Blue gray eyes. Shining black hair. She did not look like a torturer. He told her that he would not talk. She smiled and revealed the gleam of a tiny jewel in her front tooth. She reached forward to touch his face. When he tried to grab her hand, he felt the leather thongs that bound his hands.

She cupped a hand over each ear. He jerked his head violently and tried to bite her arm. Laughing, she withdrew her hands. Another voice in the tent. A man with a deep large voice. Fallon couldn’t understand the words. They lashed a chengo strap across his forehead and the short sharp spikes bit into his skin, immobilizing his head. The man with the big head drew back and the woman leaned forward and spoke unintelligible sounds to him. The language of the Glade people was distasteful gibberish harsh to his ears. The words of a people who did not live by their word, who betrayed their own treaties.

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Again she cupped a hand over each of his ears. She inserted the tip of a finger into each ear cave and he shuddered with loathing when he felt a wet tendril search the canal deep within his ear. “Relax. There is no permanent damage,” she said. 

“You speak the language of the Jade people,” Fallon said.

“You speak the language of the Glades,” she replied. What kind of dark magic was this? He opened his mouth to speak but she shushed him as one would a babe. She closed her eyes. Fallon felt an annoying tingle on either side of his head. 

“They will attack tomorrow,” she said in a monotone voice. She was a Listener! He had thought the stories were myths. His feet struggled against their bounds. He opened his lips to scream but they were glued shut. “12 dozen warriors. Sarten is their leader.” The deep voice asked if they had energy. “He lost it when he fell from the cliff. The Fae woman has the energy.” The deep voice questioned her interpretation of Fallon’s thoughts. The Listening woman repeated herself. Perhaps the Fae warrior has kept some for herself, he asked? Listening woman shrugged. She could only say what Fallon knew. She was a mind reader, not a truth teller. The deep voice asked if Fallon’s people had warrior animals. “No. Their animals have fled south in search of food.” 

Deep voice scoffed. “Warriors without energy or animals. We will rid ourselves of these traitors and drive these pestilent people from our land. Disconnect. We will use him as a battering ram in the coming battle. Let this weakened warrior fall victim to the swords of his companions.” Fallon felt the slither of tendrils emerge from his ears and he fell unconscious.

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Alpen and Drindl donned their battle leathers and gathered their weapons. The first fingers of dawn stretched above the horizon as they emerged from the tent. All around them warriors flowed through the dirt aisles between the tents and out into the clearing between two great trees. From now until the moment of battle the few words spoken would be between a warrior and his apprentice.

The warriors took their places, lining up six feet apart. Alpen showed Drindl how to dig a foot wide hole at his feet. Drindl mimicked the warriors around them, piling the dirt outside the edge of the hole. Drindl knelt in front of his hole and put his hands palms down in the hole. He felt a tingling in his hands and feet. 

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He looked up as a woman poured water over his hands and pushed the pile of dirt into the hole.His fingertips pulsed as he kneaded the wet dirt like a dough. His fingers felt thin roots at the bottom of his hole. They caressed the tips of his fingers. His arms lengthened as he followed the roots down into the earth. He was part of the tree! Time and sky and dirt were one eternal stream. He withdrew his hands from the hole along with 12 dozen other warriors. He stood. Alpen turned to speak to him, to explain but Drindl interrupted, “I know.”

Drindl stood erect and faced forward. Along with the others he withdrew his sword. The steel glinted in the dawning sun. Forward he strode, slashing the air between himself and the warrior in front of him. Each warrior’s movement synchronized by the mind of their leader, Sarten. Each of them faced right, to the south. They would drive the conniving Glades into the ground and command the valley where the spring herds of Ibik journeyed to their summer breeding ground.

12 dozen feet fell in rhythm on the ground, causing alarm among the Faeries in their nighttime tree roosts. They flew out from the trees to the eastern hills, far from the coming conflict. As the warriors passed through the tree glen they flowed as fog between the trunks then coalesced in the meadow beyond. They lined up beside each other on the rise that sloped toward the army of the Glades. Drindl and Alpen were among those on the right of Sarten, who swung his sword like a scythe through the air. 12 dozen swords matched his killing stroke. Together they were one blade, the long blade of blood. They strode forward to meet the Glade army gathered on the opposite hill.