Free Stories 2016 Read online

  "I…thank you, Sensei. You didn't have to—"

  "Yes, I do have to. You are not the only one who has benefited from your presence. I have been awakened again, I think. To see them in…in your hands, this will help carry me forward in days to come."

  Sensei stepped forward and gave Xavier a quick but emphatic hug. "We will probably not see each other again, Xavier. But I will think of you often."

  Xavier saw the look of Hirlana begin to appear in the old man's eyes, and shouted, "Wait! Wait, Sensei, you don't have to rush—"

  "I am afraid I do," he said. "I told you that the moment I knew you were finished I had business to attend to, things that I have delayed long in order to see to your training. Take what you will from here; I leave this, too, to you, if ever you have need of this hidden haven." He smiled, a brilliant light that warmed the room. "Good luck, Xavier Uriel Ross, and my blessing on you, your quest, and your family."

  And he was gone.

  Xavier didn't quite remember what he did the next couple of hours. The rooms seemed larger, emptier, without Sensei's presence, and after the first few minutes of just staring at where the old man had been, Xavier busied himself with preparing to leave—packing food, taking an assortment of the real weapons that Sensei had left, selecting the outfits which would be most useful and packing those too, and finally putting on the backpack over the sword harness. The swords would be awfully noticeable ordinarily, but he thought he might be able to make people just not notice him much—not so much being invisible as less important. Worth trying, anyway.

  Putting himself into the intangible, invisible Hirlana and the same confident state of mind, Xavier ascended through layers of stone and earth—something that felt very peculiar, and he held his breath while going up and through—to finally emerge into the dull sunlight warmth of a Chicago June.

  He glanced around, realizing with a start that this was the very same alley he'd almost died in. That did help, in a way. He knew which way to go to start heading home.

  He emerged from the alley and glanced around. No one was looking in his direction. If he went in that direction he ought to—

  He hesitated, and wondered why.

  If Sensei had taught him anything, it was to try to understand himself. Why was he hesitating? Didn't he want to go home?

  Instantly he felt a yes in his soul, an affirmation so strong he felt the sting of tears in his eyes at the thought of seeing his mother and sister again, even knowing the apologies he would owe, the guilt he would feel.

  And yet he knew he was hesitating.

  Why? I want to go home so bad I can taste it, so why . . .

  And suddenly it was obvious, so obvious he almost hit himself in the head for being an idiot. If I go home now, I'll have to leave again. Leave to hunt down Mike's killer. And they'll be sitting there again, wondering if stupid Xavier's going to get himself killed.

  Right now they would have accepted he was gone, or at least figured out how they were dealing with his disappearance. To go home, then put them through that again? No.

  Reluctantly, he turned around. "California, here I come."

  "Ah, Xavier Uriel Ross. I see you have come to the inevitable conclusion."

  Xavier whirled and stared, blinking in disbelief, and then felt his fists tighten reflexively. But before he moved he forced himself to take total control. Don't do anything too stupid.

  Still, it was hard not to just charge right up and deck the towering figure in the five-sided hat. "You son of a bitch," Xavier said quietly as he reached the man.

  "Not precisely, but your sentiment is not unexpected. And not untrue, in its essence."

  "You sent me down that alley to be killed!"

  "I find it difficult, nay, impossible, to believe that the one who has taught you failed to explain that I in fact sent you down that alley to ensure that you lived." The deep voice of the other was calm, assured, and absolutely certain. It was also definitely amused.

  "You don't know I would have died."

  "On the contrary, I knew that you would die, and most likely die long before you reached California. Had you reached California, your targets would have swiftly learned of your presence and killed you. There was absolutely no chance you would survive. Given what your teacher has taught you, and undoubtedly warned you about, do you truly believe you would have lived, had you continued on?"

  Xavier glared up at the huge man with his shadowed face, and found he couldn't answer. One thing Xavier had always been was honest with himself, and much as Xavier didn't want to admit it, this old man was right. "You could have just delivered me to him."

  "And you would not have accepted the situation so easily. The brush with death was, alas, necessary, to teach you the mortal seriousness of your situation. Now follow me."

  "Why should I?" he demanded, nonetheless finding himself following the man in his white, blue, and brown robes.

  "Because your talents are and will be desperately needed now. You are not yet ready for your hunt, but you must become so. Once you are ready, you will be returned, and then you may complete that mission you have planned for so long."

  "And what if I decide to just go this on my own? Sensei thought he had taught me everything I needed to know."

  "He taught you everything he needed to teach you," the white-haired man said. "But there is much more you will need to know to complete my mission."

  Xavier stopped and gave him a disbelieving look. "Your mission is not my problem, whoever-you-are."

  "My name is Konstantin Khoros," he said. "And I am afraid that you are wrong."

  Abruptly, Xavier became aware that there were no longer buildings surrounding him, but towering, brooding pines with mist twining through them, as they stood at an intersection of roads that showed two castles before them—one to the left, one to the right. He stopped, gaping in disbelief.

  "As you can see, my mission is now most certainly your problem. Unless you know how to find your own way home?"

  Xavier whirled, but he already knew what he would see—or rather, what he wouldn't see.

  Behind him the trees and mist stretched into grayness.

  He turned back to Khoros. "You son of a bitch. If Sensei were here he would kick your ass."

  "Undoubtedly he would. Which is why he left, so he would not be forced to do so. He recognizes my value, and the necessity that drives me, and has thus avoided a confrontation. Which, by itself, should tell you how important this task is, Xavier Uriel Ross."

  Xavier clenched his teeth against an explosion of anger that wouldn't accomplish anything. Much as he hated the idea…this Khoros guy was probably right. Sensei said he knew who Khoros was, and knew he'd been manipulated. If Sensei thought that was something he'd put up with . . .

  "He knew you had this…mission."

  "Yes."

  "And trained me knowing you'd be coming for me."

  "Yes."

  It was one of the hardest things he'd done yet, but Xavier took his anger, applied White Vision, and erased everything, eradicated his fury and disappointment, and finally opened his eyes. "So…Sensei knew I needed this mission…to finish mine."

  "That would be my belief, Xavier Ross."

  "Okay. So tell me."

  "About the mission?" Khoros chuckled. "Soon enough. First you must meet the others."

  "Others?" He stared at Khoros, then looked ahead, and felt a tiny smile tugging at his mouth. "Don't tell me. Four others."

  Another chuckle floated through the twilight. "Eventually, yes."

  Xavier shook his head and found himself laughing. "All right, you old bastard, lead on."

  "And what amuses you so, Xavier Ross?"

  "I just realized what's going on," he said. "Almost killed, trained by a mysterious sensei, gained powers beyond the lot of mortal men." He grinned up at Khoros. "I've just finished my origin story!"

  Touchstone

  by Sonia Orin Lyris

  Pohut's younger brother was trembling.

&nb
sp; "It's all right, Innel," Pohut whispered to him, though he wasn't at all certain. Why were they here, waiting for an audience with the king? What was expected of them?

  "Now," came the sharp voice of the king's pinched-faced seneschal, who pushed the two boys through an opening door.

  Inside the room, Pohut struggled not to be distracted by the bright maps on the walls. Before him was the king of the empire, sitting behind a large desk, staring directly at them. In the months they'd lived in the palace with their mother and little sister Cahlen, this was the first time they had been in the monarch's presence.

  Innel was already dropping to his knees, grabbing Pohut's hand to tug him down. Pohut went down fast, too fast, wincing at the pain as his knees hit the floor. Both boys touched their foreheads to the wood at the same time.

  "You may stand," said the seneschal. When they did not move, he said their names, and then again. This time it was Pohut who drew Innel to his feet.

  "Come closer," said the king.

  He seemed so large, the king. Which made sense, because the Arunkel empire was huge. Pohut knew how huge, too, because before his father had become a general, he had been a mapmaker.

  The brothers shuffled forward hesitantly, stopping when the seneschal held up a hand.

  Restarn esse Arunkel, Pohut mouthed silently. Restarn, He Who is the Empire.

  The door shut behind them. The sound echoed.

  "Do you know why you're here?" asked the king.

  "No, Your Royal Majesty," Pohut whispered, wondering if he'd used the right form of address. He could not seem to think. Tense, he swallowed.

  "Your family has been here since—when? Spring? Not quite a half year, then."

  "Yes, Sire," Pohut answered uncertainly.

  Spring. When they had last seen their father.

  "You'll live in the palace," their father had told them after reading the king's letter. "While I go off and take care of this little problem for His Royal Majesty." He had smiled at them, but to Pohut it had seemed forced.

  Their mother had looked around the front room of their home. It was early spring and outside the river valley's breezes smelled like life. "Why can't we stay here, Pewyan? Why must we leave at all?"

  "It is the king's will, Neleva," his father had said. "To see to it that you're all well cared for. And we can hardly say no. In any case…the palace!" He smiled wide. "Don't you want to see why they call it the Jewel of Empire?"

  Pohut remembered how eagerly he and his brother had nodded.

  "You'll study hard," his father had told them. "Make me proud. When I come back, oh, the celebration we'll have!"

  Just before he'd left, he'd given Pohut a serious look, hands on his shoulders. "Take care of your mother and brother and baby Cahlen for me. Yes?"

  "Yes, Papa."

  His father had kissed him on the forehead and had left.

  And so the family had packed, arranged for the garden, goats, and sheep to be looked after. It was an ache to leave home, to say goodbye to his father, but…the palace! They smiled bravely and let the king's men take them from the only home they'd ever known to the teeming capital city, where the Jewel of the Empire glittered pink and white in the sun, massive and sprawling.

  "What have you learned, boy, in the time you've been here?"

  Pohut's attention snapped back to the king.

  That he was not to wander the palace on his own. That his tutors were often surprised at how clever the brothers were. That he must be very careful in everything he said.

  Not the right answers, he was somehow certain. He glanced around for inspiration, eyes falling on the wall-to-ceiling map of the empire, a map he knew his father had helped create. Somewhere there, toward the north and east, his father now fought for the king. This king.

  He could remember his father's smile.

  "I have bettered my reading and my letters, sire. I have learned to fight."

  "Oh, have you?"

  Pohut's breath caught as he realized that was not a right answer.

  "I have much to learn," he said quickly, thinking of the unadorned canes he and his brother had been given to play with, along with the admonition not to poke each others' eyes out. "If it pleases you, sire."

  The king's examination of him made him feel hot. The king turned the same look on Innel. "And you? What have you learned?"

  "That his majesty is generous to the family of—" Innel looked around, eyes wide. "Of General Pewyan, sire. Thank you." He ducked his head, reddening.

  Innel must have been rehearsing that while Pohut answered. He felt a flush of pride at his younger brother's smooth answer.

  "Fine manners, at least," the king muttered. "Pohut, what do you think of my daughter, Cern?"

  Cern, the seven-year-old daughter of the king, the same age as Pohut.

  Cern, the heir to the throne.

  The brothers had sometimes been allowed to watch the children of the princess's Cohort play, outside, in their fenced yard. He had seen her there, encircled by so many guards and aides that she seemed small.

  "She is smart and beautiful," Pohut said.

  "Yes, of course she is." The king's tone was a flat irritation.

  Pohut swallowed a sudden sick feeling. He'd said the wrong thing.

  "I am better at maths," he said. He remembered his mother joking that their father loved maps and numbers more than his own children. Even baby Cahlen, three this next spring, could already count.

  The king raised an eyebrow. "You think so?"

  Pohut licked his lips and pushed on. He felt as if he were drowning, but could see no way to back out. "I have heard it said she doesn't care for the study."

  "Have you indeed? And how is she with the sword? What have you heard about that?"

  He had seen pairs of Cohort children divided out into duels, swinging padded sticks. In the center of the yard had been the princess, a ring of guards around her and a miserable-looking boy facing her.

  "I don't know, sire," he said. "Everyone was afraid to hit her, so they swung to miss."

  At this the king chuckled, and it seemed a very good sound. Pohut exhaled dizzy relief.

  "And you, Innel? You like my daughter?"

  "Yes, sire. She is very royal."

  The king grunted. "All right, enough." Then, tapping the desk, the king's gaze went to the map. Pohut could feel his look change. He felt a chill, like a puff of frozen air.

  "Your father was a fine general."

  Pohut straightened proudly. "Yes, Your Majesty." Hope leapt inside him as he replayed the king's words; if his father were no longer a general, then he might now be finished with the battles, and coming to take them home.

  "Won the battle," the king said. "But got himself killed doing it." His voice went quiet. "Damn it."

  Everything seemed very slow now. Pohut found that he had taken his younger brother's hand. Distantly he heard Innel whimper. Maybe because of how tight he was holding, or maybe because Innel already understood what Pohut refused to know. He stared at the king, then around the room, still gripping Innel.

  As he stared at the map, Pohut did not know what he felt. From the edge of his vision, the red and black and gold of the king's fine clothes seemed to pulse in time with his heartbeat.

  "He was a hero," the king said. Then, in a voice that cracked like a whip: "Say it."

  "A hero, Your Majesty," Pohut managed past the tightness in his throat.

  "Never forget that. Now go tell your mother."

  As they were escorted from the king's offices, Pohut's mind was a fog.

  Mother he found himself mouthing, over and over again. Mother, the king says…

  Pohut expected her to shout. Perhaps to scream. Certainly to weep.

  She did none of those.

  "No," she said calmly. "It is not true."

  Her face was white and her hands trembling as she reached forward into the air. At first he thought she reached for him, and he came close, but she was not even looking in his direction. "No,"
she said again. The shaking hands brushed the air as if pushing aside branches.

  Cahlen was sitting on the floor, doing something with her doll. She looked back over her shoulder curiously. "Papa?" she asked.

  "But Mother, the king," Pohut tried again. "He says…"

  "No!" His mother turned away, gathering the fall of her skirts and walking to the table. She grasped a mug of wine and raised it to her lips, shaking so violently that it splashed onto her light-colored sleeves. She drained the cup, poured another, drank again.

  From Innel came an odd, guttural sound, like a wounded animal.

  A weight Pohut did not think he could bear settled on him. He tried to remember the last words his father had said to him. It seemed important. Was it goodbye? He did not think so.

  Was it Make me proud?

  No, it was take care of the family.

  But how?

  His mother stood at the mantle of the fireplace. There sat a deep bowl of soil from their home garden where they had grown squash and beans and teardrop lettuce, surrounded by other items. Dried flowers from the meadows. A robin's egg. A branch of new cedar. A rock from the gravel path around their house. A fall of moss from the forest. That was their way, to have a bowl of home always on the mantle, to surround it with offerings to the spirits of the land who made everything grow.

  Not something to talk about here. A rude custom, a foolish superstition. Or worse, an attempt at magery. So they kept it covered. She threw the cloth aside, touched the dirt, then touched her face, again and again, in a ritual he had only seen once before, when her mother had died.

  Should he try to comfort her? Or pick up little Cahlen, who seemed, strangely, the calmest of the four of them?

  Papa, he thought. I don't know how.

  The next morning, the king's seneschal arrived.

  He gave Pohut's mother a deep bow. "Neleva, honored wife of the late general Pewyan, Protector of the Realm, Seventh of the Great Generals of Arunkel: His Royal Majesty has sent me to express his inconsolable sorrow at the loss of your venerated husband. Be assured the general is being returned by distinguished and dignified escort to the capital and will arrive within the week. I am to inquire, on behalf of His Royal Majesty, on what day you would have the funeral held."