The Book of Earthpower: The Earthpower Trilogy, #1

By Adam Anderson

In a future world again veering towards the path of destruction, what would you sacrifice to save it?

 

Abandoned to die as a young child due to a cursed disease, Remuz is saved by Shelu and Rak. They teach him to follow their ways of a Warrior: a protector of Earthpower and its bible, The Book of Earthpower. However, those longing to return to the old ways of self and greed, the Corrupted, are on the rise, more powerful than ever. All they need to prevail is The Book of Earthpower itself.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Domhain Press
• Release date: Sep 5, 2021
• ISBN: 9781399904384

Book preview

Chapter 1: The Molten Swamp

Shela pushed waist-deep through the warm, thick water, dense with sludge, debris, and sucking weeds. Mossed, rocked crags of land, home to stunted, sweating mangrove, provided a channel, a direction. Though her aging eyes were closed, she sensed the solidity of the islets and her route changed accordingly through the sweltering maze of swamp. This part of the Great Forest was always hot. The earth here was thin and continuous thermals rising from its core kept balmy temperatures trapped in a mist of heat even in winter, when white caps lit the mountains around.

Of course, the crogvipes had attached themselves to her, at least half a dozen – she hardly knew. Yellow-eyed, green-scaled and lithe, they trailed just beneath the surface inertly, intent only on pumping their poison into the veins of their prey, a sick smile seeming to sit on their hard, jagged mouths, their eyes drunk. Shela could feel the toxins heat her blood; her heart ached, and her internal organs seemed possessed by fire. But she did not fear. This was the point of this test. Any normal being would be dead. But Shela’s Gai was as old as she was and many times more strong than the taut muscles of her thin arms and legs. She kept her breathing deep and regular, kept her movement in tune with that, tuned her Gai into the Earthpower, and her Gai took the poison, fed on it and became stronger still: a force at the core of her being as palpable and real as her beating heart.

Shela’s sapphire eyes began to sparkle behind her closed lids. She would show the crogvipes’ scars to Rak, her husband, and he would know she had passed this test… but, sadly, no one else would.

Heavy drops condensed in the air above her, and rain began to fall. Her long, wiry, greying hair became sleek and dark with water, her cheeks wet. When Warriors underwent the tests, they supported each other, and there were always witnesses to both verify and admire; all the tests she had undergone had been on her own and, Rak aside, in secret. Shela had been born well before the Awakening, at a time when only men were permitted to challenge to be a Warrior. When the Awakening finally came, she was considered too old, and her supplications to train to be a Warrior were rejected – even by Rak. Now he knew more. No one else did.

Suddenly, Shela’s Gai reached out, felt a force in the swamp near her which shouldn’t be there. Her eyes flashed open, alert. From somewhere profound, below her stomach, she punched out a guttural sound, slamming the water around. The crogvipes fell from her, dead, stuffed with their own poison, drifting off on the limp current. She scanned with predator eyes. Then she saw it.

An infant, abandoned under a mangrove. She could see why. The child clearly had the Raging. Its small body alternated between violent shakes and rigidity. Its dark eyes were fixed open and dilated, staring into nothingness. It was doomed as all who had the Raging surely were – as she knew from bitter experience. Despite the tremors which shook his body, she could see the child had gentle features, round eyes and lips. His hair was a shade of dark-brown which brought hidden feelings far more painful than the crogvipes poison to her – deep, but never forgotten.

She was not alone in watching the child. A huge kimodo slipped out of the water onto the rocks beside him, its grey razor jaws salivating urgently, eyes red with desire for flesh.

‘It is better this way,’ thought Shela, though she didn’t believe it. Because of the curse connected to the Raging, if the disease did not take it, all parents sooner or later would abandon their child to die before the disease was discovered, and they too would be smeared with the curse it carried. She began to chant a prayer to ease his passing. Yet it was strange the kimodo did not strike. It seemed glazed, frozen as it gazed at its prey. Her prayer dissolved like melting ice. ‘Could it be because of the Raging?’ Shela pondered.

She hauled herself out of the swamp and onto the land, the water draining from her robes, then moved lightly over the surface towards the child. The kimodo saw her, set to charge, but a blast from her Gai sent it crashing back in a single, sudden low punch of sound, and she found herself by the child as the Raging left him, and his black eyes peacefully and painlessly closed. Asleep, not dead.

Shela swept him up in her slim, strong arms and smoothed her hand over his olive face and chestnut hair, wet with sweat and the humidity of the air. He was perhaps three years’ old. His parents must have been either well-placed or very brave to hold onto him for that long; and for the child to survive the attacks that long…

‘Who are you little warrior?’ Shela whispered. A small hand reached up and touched her face; the child held the hand there whilst his body nestled against her, calm and comfortable. Shela held on a little tighter: didn’t want to let go. Her mind was ticking… quickly.

‘What will Rak think?’ she asked the child. A pretty smile spread across her wide mouth and she giggled sweetly to herself, a girl again. ‘Only one way to find out!’ And with that, and with gazelle speed, clutching the child, she leapt from islet to islet to the edge of the swamp, leaving behind its putrid air, dense with insects, through the forest, heading for the pure air of the mountain.

Chapter 2: Home

Rak was in profound meditation when Shela arrived home. The sun had dipped over the mountain ridge right of their small, thick-walled stone cabin, casting a glooming shadow over the landscape below: a smattering of trees and orchards, fields divided by winding stone walls where specks of animals grazed, and the Great Forest brooding beyond. Rak’s crossed legs seemed to touch only the tips of the tufty grass, his arms held out in front, hands facing at once the Earth, then the sky, alternately twisting rhythmically, musically, feeling the Earthpower.

Shela hesitated. Her husband’s rugged face was drawn with lines of worry – and the silent pain they both shared. However, his beard glowed in the gathering dark betraying his vitality. His hair was braided in the rank of Great Warrior and he wore the red and black chord of honour around his robes – what should such a Warrior have to fear in a small child?

She took a step forward and at once he seemed to sink into the grass, touching hard ground firmly. His blue eyes opened, blazed at her with a second of anger, then he sighed, shook his head, and she came to sit beside him.

‘He was left to die.’ Shela spoke in a measured manner, her sapphire eyes fixed softly on him.

‘If he was left to die it was for a reason,’ Rak replied tiredly, but not unkindly. ‘How many strays are there in your little graveyard now?’ his eyes angry again.

‘There are six strays as you call them and…’ She stopped abruptly. ‘But they were all dead when I found them, poor devils, but he was alive. Yes, he has…’

‘He has the Raging,’ Rak interrupted. ‘It’s so obvious I can smell it.’

‘But he is a fighter,’ implored Shela. ‘I sensed it even as the Raging racked his body. And the strangest thing, there was a kimodo ready to strike, but it didn’t touch him – he is special.’

Quizzically, for once, Rak looked sideways at his wife. She is a good woman, he thought: she would not lie.

‘Either he has a kind of Earthpower in him or there is something special in the Raging which nobody knows about… yet,’ Shela drove on enthusiastically. ‘He could become a great Warrior, and even if he doesn’t, we could find something good out about the Raging which could destroy that supposed curse forever.’ Her eyes searched Rak’s chiselled face for a chink of hope.

‘The curse is written in The Book of Earthpower – it must be true,’ spoken with finality, but Shela sensed a weakening.

‘Rak, my husband, you are a good man and a Great Warrior.’ She paused, smiling glintingly. ‘Look at my legs.’ Shela pulled her tunic up to reveal the unmistakable scars of the crogvipes. Just as he had the first time he ever saw her, her husband looked at her with light in his face; he was finding it hard to hide his pride and fear in equal measure. ‘I have only one test to go and I too will be a Warrior – a secret Warrior, but a Warrior nonetheless. What cannot we achieve together for this child? Perhaps for all Paluna?’

The child slept on in Shela’s arms. Rak peered deeply at him, into him, then hesitatingly reached out. Trying to disguise her joy in the victory she knew was coming, Shela gave the child to Rak.

‘I have never seen his face and do not recognize his features as belonging to any family in Paluna. Perhaps he has been sent…’ Rak spoke more to himself than Shela, but then he addressed her firmly. ‘It will have to be kept a secret. You will have to raise him here in the mountain until he can no longer be recognized by whoever abandoned him to die. To them, he must be dead. As for the Raging…’

‘We will find a way.’ Shela spoke just as firmly as Rak.

‘Are you prepared…’ Rak’s words were barely audible. ‘Are you prepared to see him taken by the Raging… to see him die?’

Shela looked at Rak with the love of their shared pain. ‘Whoever can be?’

Nodding, Rak passed the child back and stood up. ‘Well, whilst we are alive, we might as well eat,’ and he headed towards their cabin, very dark now in the dusk which descended, its walls denser, like the protective shell of a tortoise.

Sensing a slight movement, Shela looked down into the open eyes of the child, gazing up at her like pools of night-still water. ‘What is your name, little one?’

With a voice like the first flowings of a frozen spring after winter, the child replied, ‘Zumer.’ It was like a word which might trouble Rak if he thought too much about it.

‘This is your new life, child, and for your new life we will name you Remuz.’

‘Remuz,’ he smiled back at Shela, and tried the name a few times: ‘Remuz, Remuz…’

All the love of a mother shimmered through Shela’s frame, and she held the child tight to her, then she followed her husband into their home, where he had lit a lamp against the gathering gloom and was closing the shutters on the night. Stars switched on one by one in the sky above.

Chapter 3: The Wolf at the Door

Rak was Guardian of the Mountain which necessarily meant that he and Shela led isolated lives, making secrecy regarding Remuz not such a great challenge. Indeed, all Warriors lived in some degree of isolation; this enabled them to meditate on the Earthpower even in their daily lives without too much distraction. It was also for this reason that all Warriors worked with land, water, or air, to create an intrinsic bond with the Earthpower on which their strength and wisdom depended. Rak gathered and cut the rock which the mountain released. Other Guardians on other mountains, also Warriors, did the same. This was then transported to the Citadel, or outlying habitations, for construction and repairs as was deemed necessary by the Citizen Council and the Grand Council. Change was not fast, nor even desired after the greed of the Old World had brought near-total destruction to the Earth. Those who survived that time set out to create a new order, and an understanding of Earthpower was developed as the Earth healed under the care of the Guardians, and The Book of Earthpower. And yet there were still some, perhaps many, who desired a return to that Old World and its ways of the self: the Corrupted.

For Remuz, however, this was a time of innocence, and he grew up at one with nature under the loving eyes of Shela, and the concerned, searching eyes of Rak. Yes, there were the times when the Raging struck: then he was dragged mercilessly into a world of noise whirring, light speeding, time stopping. However, Shela was glad to see that he was not weakened by these attacks as was normal, but always emerged with a slow smile spreading his sweet face, his dark eyes shining. With close observation she began to see tiny signs that could signal the oncoming of the Raging and began to meditate, to tune them into her Gai so that she would be ready for an attack without thought, on hand to help, ready to reduce the symptoms: to increase his chances of survival.

One time as they were at breakfast, a beautiful morning with not a breath of wind, Remuz curiously turned his head to the door as if someone had entered – then the Raging hit. She noticed this slight aside look each time she was present when the Raging struck, not prompted by a sound or movement – as if a ghost had tapped him on the shoulder. What if she could find the root of this prompt and train him not to turn? Could this halt the Raging attacking? Send it, unwelcomed, back out of the door?

Sometimes, after this look, she saw his lips move as if he mumbled words, but there was no sound, and from the shape his mouth made they were not words of any language she could understand. She would question Remuz, ‘What was that you were saying just before the Raging?’ but all Remuz could do was shrug and smile his gentle smile; he no more knew what had happened just before the Raging hit than what was going on around him during the Raging. Shela believed that if she could break through to his conscious mind during an attack, then there could be a way to break the fit, or at least control it in some way. But, she observed, the Raging was a thing of awesome power; it was the only thing which she knew of beyond the control of Earthpower. No wonder people feared it.

As he grew Remuz began to take part in their morning Gai Ritual. Naturally, at first it was just a game to him, and he would fall into bouts of laughter at the more challenging movements and stretches, and the more obscure, reverberating sounds which emanated from deep inside their bodies. This did not please Rak. But gradually Remuz began to complete the Ritual with them. He began to develop his own voice as his Gai grew and he tentatively connected with Earthpower. Never during these rituals, when the Earthpower was strongest within him, did the Raging strike. There was hope.

Of course, Shela could not be there for every attack. Although not yet a full Warrior (the final test would come unannounced and without warning), she still had to fill the Warrior’s role as a Guardian – more difficult for her as she had to do it in secret and unrewarded. Whilst Rak was a mountain man, was born and had lived in the mountain all his life, Shela came from the lowlands where the river touched the sea. When they first met, Rak had said that the dazzle in her sapphire eyes was the dazzle on the ocean, and even if Shela caught sight of her own eyes in a mirror she sometimes remembered the sea, its breezes, its many moods.

So, Shela’s affinity was with water, and when the Earthpower called her she would glide down the mountain to the Luna River and its many tributaries. She would listen as the river spoke to her, not in words, but in its rippling, the way light and shade played on its surface, in its interaction with the leaves of trees bending their branches lazily below its surface. When she understood what was to be done, she set to work. It might be to repair a bank here where flooding was not desirable (her mending was always invisible to the eye), or leave a bank there where the fields needed to flood to be enriched by the silt carried by the river. Natural dams might be removed or installed. Perhaps the river was thirsty because the mountain streams were blocked with rubble – then she would climb high with Rak who, with his stone-smith strength would help ease the flow. There was always work to be done to keep the balance of Earthpower. No one suspected she was doing Guardian work if they saw her by the river; Rak has indeed found himself a funny one was all that was observed.

By the time Remuz was nine, Shela’s Gai was well tuned to his, and one dull winter evening, as she was shifting a boulder where the river wanted to flow faster and not freeze, she felt the Raging strike Remuz with avalanche force.

She leapt from her task, flying up the mountain with all the speed her Gai could muster, her feet sure, fast – oh for a Staff!

There was the cabin, dusted with snow. The door was open – a black hole against the white – and on the threshold of the door, a lone wolf stood staring into the night: huge; its chest heaving; fiery smoke snorting from its mouth and snout.

She was too late. She had felt the Raging leave Remuz halfway up the mountain; perhaps that could have protected him from the wolf as it had done with the kimodo, but a young child cannot defend himself against a hungry wolf in winter. ‘Perhaps it is better this way,’ she thought again, not believing it, again, and, tears flooding her shuddering cheeks, she set herself to unleash her Gai against the beast.

Then Remuz appeared at the beast’s side, put his hand on its muscular shoulder, stroking the thick fur. It looked back at him – but how? Can a wolf love?

Shela dashed towards them. The wolf caught her scent and was gone in single mighty bound. Shela pulled Remuz inside, pushed the door shut, held him close – then he started laughing.

‘Mother, are you scared? I have never seen you scared! You look so funny when you’re scared!’ Shela couldn’t help it and was laughing too. They knelt by the stove, Shela threw on a log shaking her head in wonderment, and at last she spoke, her voice high with emotion.

‘Remuz my son, for so you are, and still are, praise be to Earthpower! Tell me what happened!’

Remuz thought hard for a moment, looked in the flames in the stove which lit his black eyes so that they glowed like gemstones. ‘Well, all I know is this. For the first time I felt something in the Raging. Yes, there was noise and light for I know not how long, but a sense, a communication. It was not in words – more like the way clouds fold together high above the mountain, and make something new – and beautiful. I folded in with something, without thinking, and it must have been with the wolf, for when I awoke he was standing sentinel at the door.’

Shela was transfixed, thinking a thousand miles an hour beneath her calming exterior: What does this tell us about the Raging? Can it be, in fact, somehow beautiful? ‘But were you not afraid when you saw the wolf. Your Gai is nowhere near strong enough to keep him off, yet.’

Remuz struggled to understand and explain what he had experienced. His words came out in patches. ‘Somehow… I knew… not believed, but knew… I had nothing to fear. Was it Earthpower that told me the wolf was my sentinel? Or was it another force? I don’t know.’ He shrugged a familiar shrug. ‘All I do know is that if I ever meet the wolf again, that is what I shall call him: Sentinel.’

‘Stay away from wolves, son.’ Shela smiled, ruffling his hair, then reflected. ‘But you have learned a good lesson today, as well as had a very lucky, or something, kind of escape. Remember this: the most dangerous wolves don’t look like wolves at all.’

Remuz nodded. He didn’t understand, but knew one day he would.

‘Now,’ continued Shela brightly, glancing at the pot on the stove, ‘where is that dinner?’

‘Oh,’ said Remuz a little guiltily. ‘I gave it to Sentinel.’

Chapter 4: The Mystery of the Runes

Shela told Rak about Sentinel late that night, as the fire in the stove burned darkly to embers. It did not ease his worry lines.

‘I hope it is some part of Earthpower which we do not yet understand.’ His voice trailed off. ‘I fear it is some other power completely.’

‘But what power is bad which protects a child?’ Shela protested. ‘Earthpower we know is a force for great good, but who is to say there are not other powers we don’t know which could also be forces for good? Perhaps Remuz has such a power within him.’

Rak considered, watching the embers blacken further. ‘Indeed, Earthpower is a force for great good, but in the wrong hands it can do unimaginable harm – especially if The Book itself were to fall into the hands of the Corrupted…’ He poked a dying ember with a stick, causing it to glow orange again. ‘Any power can be used for good, can be used for evil – consider what happened in the Old World.’ They looked at the fire in silence. ‘So much power – so much destruction.’

Despite his fears, Rak was impressed by the Gai that Remuz was building, and a secret pride burned inside. This stray had indeed prospered and become strong, surviving Ragings that would have killed a lesser mortal. Soon it would be time to take him deeper into the mysteries of Earthpower, to begin the meditations.

However, the boy just couldn’t get runes.

Shela herself had excelled at both reading and writing as a child, but the habit sadly died away as she had preferred to be out in nature, on the earth, under the sky, dreaming of being a Warrior against all the odds – and the laws of the time. Now her patience with runes was gone; to be sitting still when all her spirit longed to roam free, to be alive in the world where the final test might, just might, be found… She just couldn’t do it.

So, it was left to Rak. Like most Warriors, Rak held books to be extremely precious, to have an almost mystical value. He marvelled at how words could travel time and borders, thoughts slip between one mind and another, profound feelings of joy or sadness be shared at a most intimate level between strangers – and then there were the Words of the Warriors: books which shared meditations on Earthpower to enrich the understanding, empower the individual, and strengthen the bonds which held them all together. These, Rak felt, all true Warriors needed to read and cherish.

But how to read them without runes?

At the table, they sat side by side. Rak wrote out each rune, then the combinations, went through the sounds which Remuz repeated. When he pointed to the runes and asked Remuz to say the sounds, Remuz would look up at him with plaintive eyes, clearly no idea what sound went with which rune even only seconds after Rak had told him.

Weeks of this and no progress.

And yet the boy was clearly intelligent. In archery, his calculations were phenomenal. In a flash he would adjust to wind, distance, angle and smack his arrow straight in the centre of a moving target: usually Shela with a straw bale strapped to her back, leaping on the hillside like a hare. In chess it was clear from his speed that he was playing moves ahead, already assured which avenues either Rak or Shela would take, and how to cut them down when taken; Remuz was getting difficult to beat. And especially, his understanding of Earthpower was becoming profound. His intelligent eyes read clouds, distant rain, the movements of animals, the sun on the land… but he couldn’t read runes.

Rak was a kind man, but which was the true kindness? To desist from the daily torture of runes, or to persist until the mystery of them was finally revealed and their joy was unfurled? Rak decided he would make a decision the next day – always the next day – and so torture it was, and the mystery of the runes only ever unfurled the flag of defeat.

It was the middle of the night. High winds were battering the mountain - two elements of Earthpower playfighting like two juvenile lions: great sweeping clubs of wind beaten back by pads of rock. The shutters rattled their applause as the spectacle developed; distant thunder chuckled at the combat. For Shela and Rak sleep was an impossibility as the palpable might of the Earthpower around shone in their eyes, smiles on their lips as they lay in bed, only just resisting the urge to rush outside.

Suddenly, Shela’s eyes widened and filled with panic. She sat bolt upright, testing her senses in the tumult around them.

‘Remuz?’ Rak questioned. Shela nodded and they left their room, strode across the dark living space, now lit flickeringly with flecks of far lightning, and to Remuz. The Raging.

Fear filled Shela. Remuz had never had an attack at night, and how might the sheer Earthpower at work in the gathering storm affect him? There he was: rigid, shaking, eyes dilated and fixed. Rak brought a candle – and they hunched over Remuz transfixed. His lips were moving, just as Shela had glimpsed at the start of an attack, but clearly and repeatedly the same pattern this time. No sound was emitted, but it had to be a language of some kind. The shapes of his mouth made no sense, but it had to be a language!

As the storm dragged its own rage densely over the mountain, for Remuz the Raging continued. It was a long attack – the longest he’d ever suffered – and still he mouthed the same pattern over and over. Shela and Rak both knew he might not survive. In the dark, Rak reached for Shela’s hand, and she grasped his gratefully.

By the time the storm was thundering its worst beyond the mountain and onto the Citadel far below, a weak, watery dawn was trying to pull itself off the canvas of the horizon like a dazed boxer. And finally, the Raging subsided.

Remuz’s eyes found a focus – but this time there was no smile when he came to. Instead great sobs pumped his chest, he stretched his arms for Shela, and she pulled him to her, feeling the fear pulsing through him, pressing all the love and Earthpower she could back into him to try to chase the tears away.

Eventually, a smile.

‘Come!’ said Rak with great warmth and imparting great confidence – somehow. ‘After all that, you must eat!’

At the table, Remuz filled himself with the good bread and rich butter, feasting with the joy which follows the defeat of fear. Rak and Shela simply sat smiling and watching, their stomachs too tight after their own ordeal to even think of food – but not necessarily for all the same reasons.

They waited till after the Ritual, when Remuz would be filled with some Earthpower as well as sustenance, before speaking to him about what had happened. Shela and Rak nodded at each other, as they sat the solid, oak table, then Shela began.

‘Remuz, my son: can you remember anything?’

Remuz nodded, and turned a little pale even though his skin was naturally quite dark.

Too many firsts, thought Shela. Night, language, remembering…

‘Can you describe what you remember?’ pursued Rak calmly. ‘If you can, it might help us to put a stop to this, find the root of the Raging.’

Remuz gulped as though there were still a lump of bread stuck in his throat. ‘Runes,’ he said with a look of despair.

‘Runes?’ both Shela and Rak blurted confusedly, glancing quickly at each other before returning their gaze to Remuz.

‘Well, that’s not strictly true. First there was Sentinel, but then he ran off and the runes, huge runes, circled round me, surrounded me, pursued me – always the same runes.’ Remuz felt a bit ridiculous, and looked sincerely at them both to assure them that it was true. Shela considered, then spoke.

‘Do you think you could still recognize the runes?’

‘Oh yes!’ Remuz nodded exaggeratedly, ‘but I’m not sure I want to.’

‘It must be done,’ Rak insisted and set about fetching his charts, placing them on the ground before Remuz. ‘Point to the runes you saw in the order you saw them, and I will write them down.’

Remuz pointed with speed and confidence. Shela could note no doubt or hesitation in his face or movements – he was remembering and he was telling the truth.

When Remuz had finished, Rak showed Shela what he had written. She raised her eyebrows and shook her head. Rak turned to Remuz.

‘Remuz, this doesn’t make sense. This is no language I know of.’ Remuz looked surprised.

‘Of course it makes sense.’ His finger followed the runes Rak had written and he spoke the sounds his mouth had shaped during the Raging, which bore no resemblance to the normal sounds associated with the runes, and had no meaning as far as they could tell. Rak and Shela looked at each other, shook their heads, and turned to Remuz again. He repeated the exercise exactly as before. Again, the sounds which came out of Remuz’s mouth bore no resemblance to the sounds of the runes on the page, but were exactly the same sounds as before.

‘But what does it mean?’ Shela asked after a puzzled pause.

‘That, I don’t know, but I do know that it makes sense,’ Remuz answered, and read the runes again.

Rak transcribed Remuz’s ‘words’ in rune sounds he understood and showed them to Remuz. ‘Remuz: what does this say?’ Remuz gave his plaintive, apologetic shrug. Then he looked longingly to the door. Now the outside was calling him, fresh and shining after the night’s rain, and he wanted to escape into it away from the shapes which had haunted him all night in the Raging.

Neither Shela nor Rak knew what to make of it: runes with different sounds to those known across all Paluna, and a language completely unknown. They had to talk alone.

‘Go!’ Shela ordered as good humouredly as she could muster. ‘Get out of here and get some air!’ Remuz didn’t have to be asked twice, shooting out as fast as one of his arrows. Rak watched him go; his face hardened and he turned to Shela, not looking her in the eye.

‘I will have to take this to the Grandmasters.’

‘No!’ Shela in sudden panic. ‘You can’t! They will take Remuz – they will kill him as soon as they find out he has the Raging!’

‘Perhaps I can keep that hidden from them.’ Now he looked at her sincerely. ‘I can say he was a wandering boy who we took in, but he spoke a strange language and we are concerned.’

‘How long did it take you to sense he had the Raging?’ Shela cut in accusingly. ‘They will demand to see him, and they will sense it as soon as he enters the Citadel.’

‘Shela: I too love the boy, but this is all wrong. Runes whose sounds are twisted out of shape, words which make sense but have no meaning… This could undermine the balance of Earthpower which we have fought so long to establish and protect.’

They paused, both suddenly exhausted by their long, sleepless night, and the thoughts and emotions assaulting them. Finally, Shela spoke, quietly.

‘They will kill him.’

Rak nodded. He knew it was true. A great silence grew in the room – it became almost a physical presence. Finally, watching Remuz repeat the Ritual through the bright rectangle of light of the door frame, Rak took a deep breath.

‘Then I will have to get to the bottom of this myself, but Shela, when it comes to Earthpower I will never jeopardize it…’

‘And neither will Remuz!’ Shela interrupted.

That was the last they spoke on the mystery of the runes – for some time.

Chapter 5: The Music of the Night

Much to Remuz’s delight, the study of runes was abandoned from that moment, but Shela had ideas on how Remuz could continue to develop his path to be a Warrior in other ways.

One warm late-afternoon in early summer, as the sun still bathed the cabin in light, creating heat shimmers along the thick, lumpy stone walls, Remuz saw Shela striding up the slope towards him, carrying a wide smile on her mouth, visible from afar, and some kind of a stick in her hand; she waved it to him in a beckoning way, so Remuz rose and began to walk towards her. As he did so, Shela stopped, put the stick to her lips and blew; beautiful sounds slipped into the sky – it was some kind of flute.

Shela played as if in a trance, her fingers sliding over holes along the top and side of the flute, which was made out of a single piece of black hardwood, about three feet long. The melody seemed to roll like a warm breeze over the meadow grass. As Remuz reached her, he sat, his legs crossed, closed his eyes and let his mind empty of all but the music; it was profoundly peaceful; he felt as far away from the Raging as it was possible to be.

When Shela finished, she opened her eyes and watched as Remuz slowly opened his and a familiar smile spread over his lips – but in such different circumstances! She took him by the hand, hauled him up, and they headed towards the cabin together.

‘Runes, wooden spoons!’ hissed Shela. ‘This is a language which connects you directly to Earthpower – who needs words? You are now old enough and skilled enough to learn how to play music. I will teach you the basics, then it is up to you to let your Gai lead you; trust in it and you will find the tunes to tune-in to the music of the world. Night-time is best,’ Shela added almost nostalgically.

‘I have never heard you or Rak play before,’ puzzled Remuz.

‘Ah – that is because we have the music in our heads now; we no longer need to reach for it with our flutes.’ Shela looked faraway for a moment. ‘All the same, it’s a wonderful ritual. I miss it.’ Her eyes became bright as she fixed them on Remuz. ‘The Citadel is full of music, as you will one day see. Sometimes, it is truly magical.’

So, Remuz’s lessons began, and it did not take long before he was able to tentatively attempt to feel for the Earthpower through his music. In all this time, there was no sign of the Raging, and Shela hoped that she had by chance found a cure, or at least a way to tame the savage beast of it.

One night of a million stars, Remuz sat on a rock a distance below the cabin playing his flute; it was the first time he really felt that the tune which came out of it was beyond his own fingers, his own brain – was without thought, but touched with power. On the edge of his mind he could hear a wolf howl – could it be Sentinel? Owls too interwove within the notes, and other creatures of the night created