A thud, a snap, a rattle and a crack. Four tools had been flung in the space of a minute. Remnay paused mid-brush-stroke and lowered the skull of a ptarmigan to peer at his apprentice. Feline eyes noted the redness in the youth's cheeks, the vein at his temple, the clench in his jawline. The youth was working fast and working angry - never a good combination in their line of work. Each beat of tools being flung and bone being chipped was made resonant in the chamber.
Remnay put the skull aside, placed down his hand brush, and interlaced his claws. The smell of his wife's cooking was drifting in from the next chamber - a fish and seaweed medley that beckoned him so subtlety. But the Feleon was used to hunger, being a sage of Pegulis. And moreover, he was used to his apprentice's anger.
"Who beat you this time?"
"Velisha. The empirical diatribe. Again."
Remnay wiped his whiskers and felt something brush his leg.
"Well, it's a compelling argument."
"One year!" the apprentice snapped and met his master's gaze.
"I have one year left in the academy and I'm still being humiliated in the forum." He twitched as something bumped the table from below, and shot a glare towards the source.
"What does the Maestro say?"
"The same thing! I'm uncommitted to reason. Uncommitted. He says there's a line I won't cross."
"He tells you truly, Medwick."
The apprentice slammed the rock down, knocking clumps of soil from the fossilized edge. His eyes, near red with fury, were like the thermic gems that warmed the chamber.
"Damn right, there's a line! Why should I cross it? Why should I follow reason into misery? That's what they want - Velisha and Cranz and Dytweth. Everyone at the academy. They want to rationalize away all mystery and wonder and possible hope we have and turn this to a game of numbers. 'The few of Pegulis will survive while the masses fall!' Well done! Well fucking done! Such inspiration, such wisdom! Why should I listen?"
The apprentice kicked at something under the table, while Master Remnay remained a vision of patience.
"It is the dictate of the forum, Medwick. The philosophy of the academy and all Pegulis. The dialectic can be not be argued with."
Medwick tossed away his last tool and hunched across the table.
"Then what... is the point... of anything?" Silence followed. The soft hum of machinery in the depths made music with a female in the kitchen chamber. Master and apprentice locked eyes.
"Was this not all said before; before the Cataclysm." Though he smiled his eyes were damp.
"Did men not meet in the town squares? Were books not written? Did people never debate in school rooms or think for one moment about these questions?"
Suddenly he scooped up the tools, the rocks and the skulls - great handfuls that spilled and clattered on the table.
"This! All this! This excavation of the past, this digging through ashes and dirt, trying to learn, trying to understand and change! What's it all for if men like you and me sat at a table like this and STILL BURNED?!"
The last words broke him. He shuddered, slumped, his leg lashing out and connecting with something under the table. There was a yowl and a tiny leopard cub when skittering out of hiding. Across the room, it dived between a pile of books and froze up, ushering a heavier silence in the wake of Medwick's outburst.
Remnata cleared a space on the table for his elbows and leant in.
"I proposed to my wife on the second day of knowing her. And when I asked for her hand she told me this: she told me to convince her. It seemed I wasn't the first. Morsia had a string of suitors. Each had tried some various way, some tactic, some line of reasoning to persuade her. Yet I was quite the philosopher back then, you know? I decided on a unique line of argument. I climbed the north face of Mount Iodis and tried to write her name in the rocks. Broke eleven bones during the fall and spent four days in a coma."
Medwick lifted his head and frowned at his master.
"My point is, Medwick - you're angry because others are using the past to direct their present. You think this is poor wisdom, to go on what other people have attempted. You think the future is calling and change is needed. But you are both wrong."
"Then what is the answer?"
Remnay paused, then turned in his seat to nod at the book pile. From the dusty shadows the same little leopard cub came back out and blinked at her father, before toppling face first onto the ice floor.
"Shardis is demonstrating. The wisdom of babes, as always. If you look too far ahead, you fall over."
A book dropped on the cub's back. The two men watched Shardis get up again and amble forward, tottering on two legs while glaring back at the book. She promptly collided with the table leg.
"If you look behind yourself, you bump into something."
Shardis recovered, looked up at Medwick, and while staring at him staggered to the left before falling down again.
"If you look to the side with envy, you lose balance."
Shardis heard her father speaking. She blinked up at him, reached out paws, then tried to leap at his chair, before crashing down again.
"If you look up, to gods and heavens, it brings only disappointment."
The cub rose again and pawed at the ground while trying to find her feet. She promptly slammed into a chair leg.
"And if you stare at the ground, you only invite more pain." Shardis's father came out of his chair and took his daughter's paws in his. Standing over her, keeping her upright like a puppet-master, he walked her to the far wall with slow and gentle steps. Shardis swayed in his grip but used her legs, taking steps as he did, and focused on keeping upright.
"But with steady pace, a level perception, looking neither too far ahead nor to much behind... the greatest distance can be travelled."
They arrived together at a bookshelf, and Remnay lifted his daughter up to place her between the tomes. By the light of a thermic gem the cub curled up, and as she settled in for sleep the Feleon master turned again to his student.
"Sometimes it is not the answers that matter, Medwick."
He returned to stand by the youth. His paw lowered and came to rest atop Medwick's hand. It gave a squeeze.
"Now... let's see what Morsia's cooked for dinner."
* * * * *
Medwick's hand curled tighter on the horse's reins. His opposing fingers brushed the back of it - a habit of his when the memories came. The dirt road had taken them, at last, beyond the stone wall borders at the edge of sheep fields. Without a doubt, they had entered the region of the Chersonese. The strip of land where the Three Nations were in sight of one another.
"Welcome to the mixing bowl," Glyph announced from the front of the group, steering his mule between the slow-scattering sheep. His other hand motioned to the cardinal points. "See that smog to the east? That's where the Kaustir Desert starts. And that warmer breeze you feel to the west - don't breathe too deeply. That's the spore-laden, humid breath of Viridos."
Medwick's ears pricked at the strange pronunciations. The dialect was changing rapidly with each mile they crossed. With a glance to the ice mountains of Pegulis, he steered his stubborn horse after the bard and tried to soak in the moment. The Chersonese was the most temperate place in Sunnepheia, a perfect climate where land was fertile and conditions liveable. It was little wonder that this place was the most strategically important and politically volatile region in the known lands. As war loomed, many were looking to here as the battleground.
It was a historic moment in their journey. Yet for all this, Medwick could only rub his hand and think of
him.
Such a leader Remnay would have made. He would have rallied every heart on this quest. He would have lifted the weapons from the Prosperos Sea and known, instinctively, how best to conduct them. Yet not his student - not Medwick. Medwick would falter in his argument. He would be ruled by bitterness. He would cast away and break the tools so carefully prepared.
It was always their fashion.
The mage looked to the side, then behind, then ahead... and as the Black City loomed beyond the grazing valleys, he felt only dizziness... only pain.
He felt the coming collision.
TO BE CONTINUED...
