True Warriors Sing by Rowan Erlking (classic book list .TXT) 📕

LjuBa lay in her bed all that night just listening to her heart beat. The harmony around the home filled with demons was strange. After returning inside, LjuBa discovered one other interesting thing about that Cordril—he wasn’t lying when he said he was no demon. There was never a dark ominous or dissonant sound to him at all. To his wife, there was. Even in his children, very faint yet there. But Jonis was no demon.

But that was not the thing that kept her up until late. It was the swirling emotions she felt that still smothered her. Magic healed her…and she had been performing magic on a daily basis without knowing it. And Ljev believed that she ought to accept it.

It was hard to. Listening to the wind, hearing the faint music around her, it was painful. It was like realizing someone had been talking to her, and she had not comprehended it at all.

But the hardest thing to accept was that her father had confided in Ljev things he never told his daughters; Ljev who had been the pitiful squire; Ljev who needed to become a man; Ljev who up until he destroyed that gole was constantly running from others. None of it made sense. No. Nothing seemed to make sense.

LjuBa fell asleep crying.

In the morning she didn’t want to get out of bed. It wasn’t because the bed was amazingly soft or that the air in the room was chilly. It had more to do with the dread she felt in facing the strange being that saved her, and Ljev who had carried her to her room as one would a weakling. The roles had been so reversed, she didn’t want to face him feeling so pathetic. But her stomach gurgled, demanding attention.

Sitting up, LjuBa looked to the stand where a pitcher with fresh water rested in a basin, much like at home. In fact, Jonis had made the room more to KiTai tastes, setting things exactly where LjuBa would expect things to be. The familiarity of it didn’t quite have the effect he was aiming for though. In fact, the reproduction of placement was too accurate, like he had been spying on them. Her clothes were resting on a chair exactly where she would put them if she had been at home.

Climbing out of bed, LjuBa listened to the rhythm of the house. The windows were loose again, the breeze whistling by the cracks. The light shone though the glass, bringing in the sun in a strangely comforting way. LjuBa walked over to it to look out.

Beyond the glass she saw the yard. The children were already outside, the older ones milking the cows and the younger feeding the chickens while the middle children were somewhere else, perhaps feeding the other animals or in the garden. Tia was carrying out a basket full of washed clothes to a row of strung up ropes LjuBa had not seen the day before. There was no sign of Jonis or Ljev.

LjuBa turned from the window to get her clothes. She tossed the borrowed robe aside, pulling on her underclothes then the warriess robe. She put her shoes and the warrior coat on last. Taking up her sword belt, LjuBa halted, her mind going back to Jonis’s words about the written spell on the leather. Peering hard, her eyes scanned the writing that was stamped into the belt then stitched perfectly. All that time she had thought it was just decoration. The writing wasn’t even in the modern language. Jonis had recognized it on sight. Indeed he had to be an expert in magic to recognize it.

She fastened the belt without the song; the idea of doing magic was still so repugnant to her. Insulting, really. It made her feel tricked. And thinking about it more, all those ‘lucky’ songs for war were nothing more than spells to make their fighting easier.

Were the KiTai really even the greatest warriors of the world? Or was that a lie too?

Disgusted with the entire idea, LjuBa tromped to the door and opened it.

But then all her huffiness and gruffness fell off as she peered into the hallway, hoping no one heard the fuss she had been making. She was still abashed about keeling over in the yard the night before because of her weak heart. Blinking, she listened to her heart, feeling its perfect rhythm thump in her chest. No pain. The beats never stopped since that evening.

LjuBa nearly tiptoed down the hall, passing all the rooms. But had she known all those rooms were empty she would not have bothered. The family lived in the other half of the inn. She and Ljev were the only people who slept in the ‘guest’ area. But she didn’t know so she crept silently to the stairs then walked along the wall so that her footfalls would not make the boards creak. She heard nothing but the normal house rhythm until she stood two steps over the opening to the main floor. From there she heard two low male voices.

“…here. You keep questioning this over again. My advice to you is to forget all that. Stop focusing on your disgust for killing and ask yourself, what are you willing to die for?”

That was Jonis. His earnest way of speaking was identifiable.

“What am I willing to die for?” Ljev murmured, sounding puzzled. “But how does that help me kill—?”

Jonis huffed with exhaustion. “It doesn’t help you kill. It helps you set your priorities. The fact is, you are always bound to make mistakes. I know your heart is in the right place, but you can’t stress over it all the time.”

Ljev sighed, sounding tired also.

“Look,” Jonis said, “When you killed that gole, what were you thinking? You want it dead or—”

“You know what I was thinking!” Ljev snapped. “You stole that memory from my head! You know everything I was thinking at that time!”

Jonis moaned aloud. “I know. But you need to admit it aloud. Knowing something in the back of your head and admitting it are two entirely different things. Both you and that girl of yours have the same problem. Neither of you want to admit aloud what you two are really thinking, so both of you are playing this stupid game of self-deception. Just admit it. Why did you kill that gole?”

“I didn’t want him to kill her!” Ljev snapped.

LjuBa stepped down another step, holding her breath.

“Was that so hard?” Jonis said, still sounding tired.

Ljev huffed, his chair scraping as if he was scooting away from a table. “Yes! And though I wish I could say you don’t know how hard that is, you have been in my head!”

Jonis chuckled painfully. “Well, it is pretty frustrating hearing your thoughts in my head, also knowing you are thickskulled enough not to listen to free advice.”

“Free advice?” Ljev sounded incredulous. “Being here has been taxing.”

“Only because you are constantly keeping your guard up,” Jonis replied with a snort. “Your lack of trust is hurting you more than anything I can possibly do. You should have gone to bed. No one would have hurt her.”

“That’s not why I stayed up,” Ljev said through his teeth.

Chuckling more, Jonis’s chair now scraped. “Oh? Have you forgotten already that I have seen into your head?”

“I wanted to learn how you made those gole wards,” Ljev said.

“Right…” Jonis’s footfalls crossed the room. LjuBa could see him now, heading to the front door of the inn. He pulled on the handle to open it.

LjuBa decided to hurry down, pretending she hadn’t been standing there. Ljev turned with a jerk when he saw her descend into the room. He posture relaxed almost immediately.

Walking over to him, LjuBa peered at his worn expression. “Didn’t you get any sleep?”

He sighed, shrugging. “I got enough.”

Closing her eyes, LjuBa looked towards Jonis. The man had not lied to Ljev any more than her. Both of them had been stubborn and it was wearing them down.

Looking back to the table, LjuBa saw it covered in red paper written on with gold and sometimes black ink. Some of them had gold filaments tied to the ends of them, and some had loops up top. Two had clay bells, on which was writing in the old script.

Jonis called out the door. “Vas es go en ot dar?”

Down on the main floor, LjuBa could also now here an echo from outside that she could not hear in the stair well. One of the kids was calling in for their father to come out. It just had that sound. LjuBa and Ljev followed the moment Jonis stepped outside to answer his child.

Outside beyond the gate on the road stood three men. They were somewhat shorter than Jonis, stockier in build with reddish brown hair and light brown eyes with creamy tan skin, real humans of Westhaven. All three were dressed in strange blue uniforms that had mini-coats covering their chest to their elbows, the rest of the suit like a jumper. Patches and stripes on their shoulders indicated something special about them though the KiTai warriors did not know what. Around their hips were weapon belts just like the one hanging on Jonis’s wall.

“Et haz ben eh lun tam, Oprin!” Jonis hailed them

One balding man called to Jonis, his eyes flickering to Ljev and LjuBa with narrow suspicion. “Macoy! Em haz ben cint ba de Patriark ov Brein Amon ta prehend ya ee da jenshin ya tol, ee brin ya bek ta Danslik.”

“A liv o ded?” Jonis asked, his smirk immediately on his face though his hip was set to his side where LjuBa noticed another weapon like the one he had given Ljev. All of his children had run to the porch, his wife standing in front of them with her blue eyes fixed in a glare at the three intruders. She looked likely to transform into some monster to devour them with the look she maintained.

“Pref’bly a liv, so ya cen stan tri.”

“What is he saying?” LjuBa hissed to Ljev who shrugged, just as confused as she was.

Tia whispered, “They’re here to take Jonis and me back to the Patriarch of Brein Amon to stand trial.”

“Stand trial?” Ljev murmured as Jonis cast back a witty retort neither he nor LjuBa could understand, one that made the soldier bristle.

“Yes.” Tia nodded. “Remember when I told you Jonis hunted me because there was a price on my head?”

Both LjuBa and Ljev nodded.

“Well, in the end when Jonis proposed to me he offered a solution so that the Patriarch would leave me alone,” Tia watched the soldiers lift their guns up. She then hissed for the youngest children to go into the house. The older ones looked ready to fight, remaining outside. She then said to LjuBa, “You see, the Patriarch wanted to own me so that he could use me to…well, let’s just say I have a gift similar to Jonis’s that he believed was convenient to use. So when Jonis proposed to me, he was offering freedom from that.”

One of the soldiers pointed his gun at Jonis.

But the Cordril snorted, setting his hands together in the