Part III
When he opened his eyes, Mason had almost forgotten where he was until his gaze focused on the angry, round face of Prama about two feet away, staring at him. He jumped in alarm and heard the melodic laughter of Viji, who was behind the counter, using a muslin cloth to wrap a crystal for a newly-happy customer. All three of them were looking at Mason, who was still trying to catch his breath. Prama chortled and toddled away, resuming her seemingly endless task of cleaning Maninder.
“You’re response to Prama is very much mine in the morning, Master Scholar.” He then purred a beautiful string of unrecognizable syllables to Prama, who giggled and blushed like a young girl. “Did you sleep well?” he asked after Prama began suspiciously following a man around the shop.
Mason stretched his arms upward, coming down from his panicked state. “Very well, thank you.”
Suddenly, something clicked in his brain and he quickly jumped up.
“What time is?” he asked, frantically looking around the store.
Viji peered out the window next to the counter, shielding his eyes from the harsh sun.
“It is not yet midday. Perhaps an hour away. Why is that?”
Mason didn’t bother to grab his bag as he ran out the front door, not really knowing what he would do next. All he knew was that Ren had gone and left him with Viji and Prama. He nearly ran into several people as they hurried up and down the street, and Ren was nowhere to be seen. Crestfallen, he slumped back into Maninder and proceeded to plop directly down on the same couch where he had been sleeping, much to the vexation of Prama, who had just began to tidy up the area.
“She’s gone, isn’t she?”
Viji cocked his head in confusion. “Ren? She is outside, in the back. She is … channeling her bees.”
The older man pointed to a curtained doorway.
Mason’s mood immediately shifted and came to his feet and scurried to the opening, pushing the thick drapery back to see an open training area, complete with what appeared to be a difficult obstacle course and a weapons rack.
Just as the Vision had said, Ren was focusing her entire self on practicing with a staff, whipping it effortlessly through the air. From what he had studied of weapon combat, her form was perfect. Standing an inch or two taller than he, she was a strongly built woman with intense brown eyes, a dark complexion, and long violet-dyed hair that was braided simply so as to be out of her way. He was astounded that he hadn’t noticed her hair color before but realized she had removed the brown scarf she had wrapped around her head earlier. Her skin was coated in a thin layer of sweat, and she had also discarded her belt and boots near the door, leaving her wearing only a pair of baggy cropped pants and a khati, a top tied together in the front like a corset but much less constricting. He speculated from which city-state she hailed; she was not Torchi, as they were much shorter and lighter skinned than she was, but wondered if it would be such a good idea to ask.
Maybe later, he thought as she smashed a hanging gourd with the staff.
Using the quarterstaff as a vault, Ren dashed forward and launched onto a platform near the top of the obstacle course, then dropped to a series of bars bolted to a pair of parallel boards nearly ten feet above the ground. She swung herself across the bars, the muscles in her arms contracting, and when she reached the scaffold on the other side, she chose to climb the wall directly opposite Viji’s house. Her agility and strength were astonishing to watch.
“She channels her bees quite well, I think,” said Viji from behind him. “Don’t you, Master Scholar?”
Mason had forgotten that anyone else was nearby. “How long has she been at this?”
“A few hours. She pushes herself too hard.” The paternal tone in his voice did not go unnoticed, but Mason did not feel he knew either well enough to prod.
“It’s a marvel, Viji. I’ve studied the Legions from the Chronicles, talked to the Legion guards in Sain Barthon. I even spoke to another Scholar who’d been in the field several times about them. But seeing one in action? It’s … how did she become a Legion? Has she ever told you?”
The Vision did not look up while he dusted small wooden figurines on one of the display shelves on the wall. “Besides dying, I do not believe the specifics are any of my business to discuss with you, Master Scholar.”
His feelings hurt, Mason pursed his lips. He had hoped that Viji would not be as frugal with his information as everyone else seemed to be. The Legions he had met in Sain Barthon reacted differently, sometimes angrily, to his question, but he never got an answer out of any of them. He understood that trust and respect had to be earned, but it was almost as if people were purposefully blocking him from learning anything other than basic facts: a Legion becomes one after they die. No one, including the Legion themselves, knows how they were chosen, let alone why, but the fact that no one had tried documenting their experiences was truly a disservice to the Scholar archives. And to the warriors themselves!
But it wasn’t just in this respect that Mason felt treated as an outsider. Even the other Scholars in his classes were more prepared, as if they had known since birth they were going to enlist in the Guardians. Mason had decided only a month before he graduated from seminary that he wanted to be one and spent the required four-month apprenticeship with a seasoned Scholar, Mavhi Dolane, that was stationed in Vasoy, a Guardian stronghold slightly south from his how city-state of Moneteras. Throughout much of his training there and in Sain Barthon, he taught himself, since he was considered to be somewhat of an outcast; on his off days, he spent hours in the library, perusing through volumes of demon codexes and essays on alternate dimension, in addition to eat required readings. And yet none of that mattered; he still felt completely alien and alone. Lost.
Viji noticed the downturn in Mason’s mood and his eyes became kind.
“You see these?” he asked, pointing to the figurines he had been cleaning. “Ren whittled all of them. Her father was a carpenter … that was to be her path, too: an artist, not a fighter.”
The miniature wild cat sculpture was particularly good; the strands of hair at the tip of the tail were so finely cut that he almost as though she had just glued individual hairs onto the wood. Mason’s favorite of them all was the small yet exaggerated version of Viji himself, which had somehow managed to capture even the twinkle in the old man’s eye.
“So yes, to talk about their lives past is a very touchy subject for most, but especially those like her,” Viji continued. “Most are happy to just be left alone in that respect. Many bad feelings, and not just from the resurrection, which is traumatic in its own right.”
Mason again began watching Ren as she seamlessly performed multiple flips across a narrow beam. Despite having lived a sheltered life in Moneteras, he’d witnessed death before: a close friend had passed away while he was at seminary, and he’d attended funerals for both sets of grandparents. But none of that could have prepared him for dealing with a Legion, particularly Ren. Not only were they personally acquainted with whatever god of death they knew, they had to fight it on a daily basis. He could not imagine being forced to live that life.
“She has not chosen this,” Viji said flatly, almost as if he could read Mason’s mind, “but she lives within those confines as she wishes.”
Mason looked at Viji. “Has anyone ever woken up and just refused to do it?”
“I cannot be completely certain,” admitted Viji after contemplating the question. “I’m sure there have probably been a few.”
He touched Mason’s arm and motioned toward the store.
“You can return indoors. Ren has been told not to leave you here, even if it is in your best interest.” Viji turned to go into the house but stopped mid-step, looking over his shoulder to add, “And in hers.”
Mason took one last glance at the Legion, who was now pulling herself into a handstand on a plank quite high off the ground, before he reluctantly followed the Vision inside, the curtain falling back into place.
* * *
The conditioning course was starting to become too familiar, Ren thought, as she tried to invent new ways to challenge herself. It had been nearly three hours straight since she had started and she wasn’t even close to being out of breath. She often wished she had the opportunity to train in Sain Barthon’s virtual rooms, which had various opponents available for dueling and nearly every type of environment you could think of. It, of course, lacked a certain feel to it that unnerved her, from what she remembered of her visit several years earlier. Although it was meant to be as realistic as possible, everything felt artificial: the sensation of landing a heavy punch on a thick-skinned diceros demon didn’t have the same sting, and the whipping winds of the Dremmin Mountains of the north were obviously a set of high-intensity fans. But at least there was variety. She supposed she got plenty of experience out in the real world, but sometimes she wondered if she could lose her edge. Or if she had already started.
She had been a Legion for nearly fifteen years, which was almost unheard of for humans. Most Legions didn’t last any more than five years or so, anyway, and Shadow Legions, like Ren, even less time. Only a handful of Legions had lived over ten years after they initially were resurrected, and they were often rewarded for that achievement with no assignments at all or with suicide missions. Most opted for the latter; it was a more dignified way to go, and some even survived those, cementing them as legends among their peers. None had managed to accomplish that in decades.
Her eyes closed, Ren stood atop a ten-foot pole on one foot with the other firmly pressed on the interior of her thigh, and her arms extended upward. She quickly switched her feet’s positions with very little loss of balance, which disappointed her. Maybe she needed to tie weights to her ankles. She shrugged and leapt off the pole, somersaulted, and landed squarely on the balls of her feet, her knees bent. Frustrated at the ease of her activities, she jogged to the weapon rack to pick up a set of azrin sticks, a traditional pair of dueling hardwood weapons from the Spiral in the Cimera Ocean to the east. She didn’t use them too often, since they didn’t cause much damage and were mainly for subduing something, but she figured even a slight deviation in her regimen might give her some peace that she wasn’t slipping.
It was bad enough she had let the demons escape. Even with the distraction of the Scholar and the Vitorian, she should have been able to catch them, or at least she should have been able to get a better idea of where they had gone. She twirled the azrin sticks and practiced with a wooden dummy a few feet away, hitting what would be pressure points or weak spots. She kept envisioning the slain victims … well, she was trying to, at least. She wanted to see them, to respect them, their families and friends; it’s what kept her humanity in check. She had seen too many Legions forget that they were not just killing machines, that they had emotions and ties to this world, even if it didn’t remember them.
That’s the problem, she thought.
Even the Chronicles that Alderic was trying to add to were little more than record keeping, not sweeping sagas of heroic exploits: no actual names or any identifying factors went into the creation of the documents. It was as if only the events were what mattered. She assumed that Alderic, being young and probably not as indoctrinated as some of the other Scholars she had met, would try to personalize his accounts, but they would be edited to fit the required length. Just another addition to the multiple volumes of meaningless recitations of facts.
She hadn’t realized that she was leaving deeper indentations in the dummy than she usually did until she stopped thinking about the Chronicles. Her breath was much more strained than it should have been, and she knew it had very little to do with her exercise. She dropped her arms to her sides and took deep breaths. Maybe she should go back into Maninder for meditation and try to think about warm beaches and calming salt baths, the smell of her mother’s floral arrangements … Bekame.
She started to feel her pulse rise again.
Maybe I should pretend I’m kicking Dormani’s ass instead.
* * *
With Mason close behind him, Viji gestured toward the back room where Ren had been engaged in her verbal squabble several hours earlier. Mason wasn’t sure what to expect when they entered — a meditation chamber, conference room, sedated demons in cages with which Ren trained — but found a sparsely decorated communication room with a raised dais in the center, a small chair, a monolithic tower and its much smaller screen and projector device on the fair side. He also saw a broom and a small pile of what seemed to be a broken piece of pottery next to the door.
After shutting the door behind him, Viji hobbled to the communicator screen and flipped the switch at the bottom of the monitor, turning the display beam sideways and creating a holographic map of Torch on the dais. The Vision sat on the chair, propped his feet on the bar between the legs, and stared at the map.
“What’s this?” Mason asked.
The old man steadied his gaze on the map. “I found echoes of the demons Ren was searching for last night.
Flashes of the previous night came to him, almost like a dream. He was actually skeptical that it had truly happened. Even with all of his research into demons, the ones he had seen in the bar had appeared human. He wouldn’t have even noticed them had they not fled the scene after catching sight of Ren. And even then, it took a proclamation from the Legion for him to fully realize it.
“Is there any chance we could alert the Torchi authorities?” he asked. “I’m sure they could be of some help, especially if they know a Legion is on the case.”
If Viji was annoyed, he didn’t show it, and for that Mason was appreciative.
“That is well above their abilities, Master Scholar,” the Vision said, adding, “and they would only get in Ren’s way, anyway.”
“Is this map … magical?” Mason asked, waving his hand through the beam of light. “Does it show you the demons?”
Viji erupted into his song-like laughter again. If it had been anyone else, Mason might have felt patronized, but something in Viji’s warm delivery gave no impression of condescension.
“No, my dear Scholar, this is only a tool. My intuition is my guide.”
The thick door swung open and Ren entered, her body soaked in sweat and a towel around her neck. She didn’t have a smile on her face but her gait was much looser. Prama was scolding her from the shop, which now had even more patrons browsing the merchandise, and Ren responded with equally harsh-sounding Torchin as she closed and locked the door.
“You have to tell your wife to ease up, Vij,” Ren said as she dropped to the floor and leaned back on her hands. “She’s going to burst a blood vessel one of these days. You sleep okay?”
Mason didn’t realize she was talking to him and started sputtering again. She made him so incredibly nervous, even when she wasn’t trying.
“Find anything?” she asked, shrugging at Mason’s inability to communicate in actual words.
Viji grinned and pointed to the map.
“It is difficult for me to pinpoint their exact location with all the energies within the city walls, but I can give you a good idea.” He pushed a few buttons on the projector, which zoomed the hologram onto the north side of Suanluz.
Ren nodded slowly, staring at the map. “So back to Old Town it is.”
“Most likely, they are resting, eating a rat or two to keep their strength up.”
Ren grimaced. “And no one looks normal if they have rat blood running through them.”
She popped up with a level of energy that surprised Mason. When had she last slept, he wondered.
“So I’d better get going, right? Get them while they’re recouping.”
Mason raised his hand. “We’d … um, we had better get going.”
“No,” Ren said firmly. “I can’t risk -“
Mason straightened his back and squared his jaw. “The Council has ordered that I am to come with you on all missions to record them for the Chronicles, and I believe that Phelan Dormani made this abundantly clear to you, Legion.”
Ren’s stone-eyed glare frightened him. Her nostrils flared and her jaw hardened, but she said nothing. Mason’s determination was wavering, and he was certain she could see his legs and arms shaking violently.
Thankfully, Viji broke the silence. “There is no point in leaving now. You’d be searching for hours. With a little more time, I can get a more specific location. Until then, Ren, you need rest. It’s the same room upstairs as it always was. And Master Scholar, you can help Prama and I run Maninder until closer to nightfall.”
Ren stomped toward the door, jerking her arm away from Viji’s outstretched hand and pulling the locked door open, snapping the metal locking system in two.
“Master Scholar, my ass,” she growled.
The Vision closed his eyes and sighed, watching Ren as she disappeared up the stairs.
After a few moments, Viji again filled the uncomfortable void with his voice.
“In time, you’ll learn to not anger her like that. And do not ever, under any circumstances, call her ‘Legion’ again.”
His tone seemed to imply the final, ominous phrase, “if you know what’s best for you.”
a little more juju 