Eight years before the founding of the first kingdom

"So when are you going to show us what that can do?" Votha, one of the spears, asked during a break in training.

Garanth followed Votha's gaze to his sword. "This?" Garanth drew it and immediately all the reavers nearby flocked to see it.

"That's not bronze, what is it?"

"Adamant."

"Is it sharp?"

"Very, but its edge never dulls so no sharpening is needed."

"It looks heavy," Votha said.

"It's not. Try it." Garanth held it out, carpon up so Votha could grab it.

Votha took the weapon and gave it a little up and down shake as if he were chopping something. "It's not heavy at all. It practically floats in the hand."

"Here, let me see." Another reaver held out his hand.

Votha spun the sword in a flourish and handed it to him. The reaver jumped back as the sword's tip cut through his leather coat along the top edge of a row of bronze plates and caught him on the upper inside of his right arm. A line of blood beaded up through the tunic underneath, but the injured reaver hissed in pain and clamped a hand on his arm. Blood oozed from between his fingers.

A nearby daikon raced over, opened the leather coat, tore his tunic open and inspected the chest wound. He then grabbed the man's arm. "Let me see it." The daikon pulled back the spearman's hand and fresh blood surged out. "Squeeze that tight," the daikon said, squeezing his arm until he groaned. "Better lie down." He helped the man to the ground. "Keep the arm up."

"How bad is it?" Garanth asked.

"It's bad, Dra. I think he cut an artery."

Garanth looked to Votha. "How fast of a runner are you?"

"Fast."

"Go find Karux. Tell him we need his craft right now!"

Votha dropped the sword and ran, kicking up gravel in his passing.

"I don't know what all the fuss is about," the injured reaver said as he lay on the ground. "It's a small cut."

"You just keep holding that wound." The daikon turned on the bystanders. "The rest of you, get back to practice!"

The other reavers drifted away casting concerned glances backwards. Garanth and the daikon knelt by the injured man watching blood pool in his armpit and trickle on the ground. After a few minutes the wounded man asked, "Is it getting cold?"

Garanth looked up. The sun was high in a cloudless warm spring sky.

"Just hang on," the daikon said.

The wounded reaver had grown pale and his breaths were coming in rapid shallow gasps by the time Karux approached in a fast hobble. His students jogged to keep up. "Which one of you is injured?" Karux scowled.

Garanth nodded toward the man lying on the ground in a pool of blood, though they all had blood on their hands.

"The reaver said you had called me," Karux told Garanth. "I thought you were the one injured."

Garanth shrugged, not knowing what to say. "Thanks for coming anyway?"

Karux turned to the daikon. "No, don't move your hand, keep the pressure on." He stared a moment at the injured man then shook his head. "It's not a bad cut, but he's lost a lot of blood." He turned to his students. "Can you see the wound?"

The three gave him confused frowns.

"Use your perceptions! I want you to see how I do this. How else will you ever learn anything?"

Garanth found himself staring at the daikon's hands. Dried blood crusted his fingers in dark brown over which fresh red blood oozed in viscid swellings. As he stared, the blood seemed to expand in his vision so that he saw increasing shades of lighter and darker red. Lost in that red flood, Garanth began to see other colors, tiny flecks of yellow, green and blue. The closer he looked, the more these colors seemed to resolve into beaded strands, each bead a different shape... and then he saw them.

It was as if the shapes he had spent years memorizing and drawing in the sand trays had suddenly leaped into the air and puffed themselves into little balls.

"Now, focus on the wound," Karux said, "and watch."

Garanth tried to move his perceptions back and the individual symbols shrank to a vast constellation of shapes. He found a tangled knot and peered closer.

The pattern of the man's flesh was a regular grid of repeating symbols underlain by crisscrossing and branching strands. The wound itself was a giant chasm cutting through these patterns. A confusion of tangled strands, which must have been blood, filled the wound.

Karux began calling on the names of the elements and new symbols appeared, drawn by his voice. The new symbols lined up along the broken edge of a structure which Garanth assumed must be the cut artery. He focused in on the new symbols and they moved away from his perceptions, scattering the pattern. He quickly learned one had to focus near but not directly at where one wanted them to be or at the symbol itself.

"Stop it!" Karux said.

Garanth tried not to focus too closely at the karis as Karux reordered the symbols and then called out the command to collapse them. The strands collapsed, the symbols falling in on each other in a flash of energy no physical eye could see. When it had completed, the artery was sealed. After that, he rejoined the flesh around it and the wound was closed.

"Give him some water, a little at a time and not too much. He'll need to rest to recover his strength." Karux turned an angry face on his students. "Now, who was interfering with my efforts? Netac?"

Netac looked surprised. "Of course not."

"Corha? I suppose you were trying to help."

"No! I mean, I didn't do anything. I swear by the mountain."

"Harkin?"

Harkin gave him a confused and distracted look.

"No, you probably weren't even paying attention." Karux rose up and took a deep breath. "Very well. Daikon, how often do these little training exercises happen?"

"Not often, and they're usually not this severe, just bruises and sprains and the rare broken bone."

"Good enough. For now on, my students will practice their skills on your wounded, any wounded."

The daikon looked very uncomfortable.

"Is that wise?" Netac asked. "We've only begun to learn to manipulate karis. But to try and form schemas, to make changes..."

"You can only learn by doing." Karux planted his walking stick in the ground, turned and walked back to Har-Tor.

<====|==|====>

The settlement had been moved to a hill because of the gob-bocari. The men of the korion between Har-Tor and Nur had surrounded it with earthen ramparts and topped it with a palisade of sharpened poles. The settlement had no name, but those who knew of it and referred to it as anything, sometimes called it Kerwyn's Hill, after the tribe's founding elder. For the last nine years, Macander called it home.

"Why do you look upon our defenses with such disdain?" Shihar asked Macander.

Macander forced himself to smile. Since he had gotten married and had a child of his own—children now that another was on its way—he had been doing a lot more smiling of late. Still, his face seemed to have a longer memory than his heart. "I only regret that they're necessary." Macander turned to Shihar, the current elder of the korion and Kerwyn's great-grandson. "I can't help but feel penned in like one of our animals."

Shihar laughed and clapped Macander on the shoulder. "Perhaps you're right, but at least we're allowed to husband ourselves."

Macander forced himself to chuckle along. He had been feeling out-of-sorts all day. He told himself it was only because Tokarha's time for birthing was so near. Young Reavkin's delivery had been difficult for Tokarha. He didn't want to think what might happen if worse problems occurred during this birth.

Increasingly, his thoughts turned to Karux. The midwives of Kerwyn's Hill were experienced enough, but the thought of supernatural aid seemed like a good idea to him now. Except that thoughts of Karux lead to thoughts of his own mother and how she died the winter they fled the Pelavale while Karux stood by helplessly.

"Adra! Adra!" A young boy, leading a pack of children his age, came running up the path that led to the korion's main gate. "Some men are coming up the road."

"Is that so, Harcor?" Shihar smiled down. "How many men?"

"I don't know. A bunch!" Harcor gave a little excited jump.

"They has spears!" His gap-toothed friend next to him agreed.

Shihar cast a questioning look to Macander, then walked to the gate and surveyed the road. Macander followed, along with a handful of other adults. Any visitor was a curiosity.

Ten reavers wearing hardened leather tunics and carrying short double-pointed spears marching in a square formation around a man wearing a long yellow robe. Seeing the short double-headed spears, there were only two places they could be from and, since they came from the south, they weren't from Har-Tor.

The men marched right up to the gates of the korion which stood open and welcoming. They halted and the five men in the front separated, allowing the man in the robe to step out while they closed up behind him again. The children laughed and clapped their hands and the man in yellow smiled down at them as he approached the two men at the gate.

"Greetings travelers and be welcome," Shihar said. "From where have you come and to what do we owe the honor of your visit?"

Macander frowned at the sight of the tattoo on the man's forehead. The man raised his palm on which the same circle within an oval within a triangle tattoo had been marked.

"Greetings people," the robed man intoned. "May the blessings of The Mountain be upon you."

"And upon you," Shihar replied with a slight bow.

"My name is Gorvia. I am a speaker for the koria of the Collective."

The reavers standing behind Gorvia had the almost-bored confidence of veteran warriors.

Macander's heart began to beat faster. His mouth went dry while his hands started to sweat. It was the same loose-jointed anxiety he felt going into battle. He felt he should call out a warning. These men were a threat. But what would he say? How could he prove only vague suspicions?

"I know naught of these koria who call themselves the Collective," Shihar said, "but you are welcome to stay and tell me of them. Let us go to my house where you may refresh yourself from your journey."

"Gladly will I stay with you, but first I am charged with a message from the people of the Collective to the people of this korion."

Shihar looked around. The whole korion had already gathered at the gate. Seeing the visitor intended to address them, the people took a step nearer. Shihar shrugged. "Speak on."

Gorvia gestured to a reaver who produced a small wooden box. "The people of the Collective send their greetings and a small token of their esteem." The reaver opened the box and Gorvia withdrew a pair of bright copper arm bands and presented it to Shihar who admired them, but kept his hands at his sides. The eyes of the villagers widened. If one were to melt down all the copper in the korion, they wouldn't have enough for even one of the magnificently crafted arm bands.

Shihar looked dismayed. "Your gift is too great. How can I accept these?"

With a dismissive gesture, Gorvia thrust them into Shihar's hands. "The koria of the Collective have profited greatly since they have learned to set aside their differences and work together. This is nothing."

"The elders of your villages must be very wise," Shihar mumbled, staring hard at the copper bands, "very wise indeed."

Macander held his breath. The urge to shout out "It's a trick," had nearly become overwhelming. A hand slipped around his arm. He turned and looked into Tokarha's beaming face.

"The people of the Collective wish to share their good fortune." Gorvia said. "They have sent me to invite you to join them."

"Join them?" Shihar asked. "Where?"

"Join them by having this korion become part of the Collective."

Macander held his breath.

"But what does that mean?"

Gorvia blinked, looking puzzled. "In the Collective, everyone contributes the excess of whatever they have, sharing it with those who need it. The villages of the plain contribute grain, those of the hills contribute cattle and those along the river contribute fish. Why a famine could strike us for seven years, yet we have enough grain stored up to outlast it."

Shihar whistled, "That's a lot of grain."

Macander started to speak when Shihar added, "Who owns it?"

Macander exhaled. Perhaps Shihar had not been taken in. He looked at Gorvia whose confusion seemed mingled with a trace of indignation.

"Why everyone in the Collective." His tone indicated he thought the answer should have been obvious.

"So anyone can take out as much as they like, whenever they want?"

"Well, no. Of course not." Gorvia frowned. "The stewards make sure the food goes only to the needy."

"I imagine you have a lot of needy," Macander cut in snidely.

"There are always those who are sick or injured. We make sure that all of the Collective are cared for."

"And, no doubt, every lazy man of the plains comes with his hands out for free food," Shihar suggested.

Gorvia's smile faded. "No one eats for free. Everyone contributes to the Collective. We find work suited to their abilities."

"And if someone doesn't want to work?" Macander asked.

Gorvia frowned in earnest. "We have ways of convincing them to contribute."

"Thank you, no." Shihar handed a fortune in copper back to the man in yellow. "We do well enough on our own." Gorvia pointed at one of the men standing nearby. "When Ontru, over there broke his arm and couldn't work, we made sure his family ate better than our own. When my own Mrissan grew ill, the women of the village filled my house to care for me and my children. No, stranger, no one has to force us to take care of our own and I will not put myself at the mercy of strangers I have never met."

"What of your duty to your fellow man?" Gorvia asked. "Surely you are not so selfish to hoard your good fortune and allow others to starve?"

"I thought the Collective had more food than it knew what to do with it? Was I mistaken, or were you mistaken in thinking we were foolish enough to give away our food so that you could sell it back to us? We work hard enough for what we have without having to buy it back a second time."

Macander relaxed. Obviously Shihar, who seemed to have no interest in anything that took place beyond his fields, had heard of the corruption of the Nur's stewards.

Gorvia's face hardened and he seemed to grow an inch as his spine straightened indignantly. "I see you are a proud and self-reliant people. Have you not heard that the path of the proud leads to destruction?"

"Yes," Shihar said. "And I've also heard a fool seeks to harvest grain he did not plant."

"The Collective has more than just food to offer," Gorvia said. "We can guarantee protection from the gob-bocari as well as those hungry and desperate reavers who might try and take your food."

Shihar paused and looked around. "We have a high hill, strong walls and stronger men." He shrugged. "We also have no wealth to attract such reavers."

Gorvia's voice rose to address the men and women gathered round. "No doubt many of you have heard of the beastmen, unnatural predators shaped like men but with the cunning and ferocity of animals? Worse than the gob-bocari, they have destroyed entire villages. They take no grain but eat the bodies of the dead and give everything else over to their lord of fire and destruction."

Macander sighed. He leaned over and whispered in Tokarha's ear, "It sounds like Nur is back to their old tricks."

Gorvia paced in a circle around Shihar as he spoke, addressing the villagers who pressed more tightly against each other with each word. "The Collective has a vast soreav, more men than you can count, men who neither raise the hoe nor pull the plow, men who spend all day every day training with spear and shield to fight and kill. We have driven these beastmen from the lands of the river and are pushing them back into the hill country." He paused and lowered his voice. "Some of them may come your way."

Gorvia paused in front of Shihar and looked down at him though he still spoke loudly enough for the surrounding people to hear. "We accord our elders respect because we think they have used their years to gather wisdom. But, as they say, even a fool may grow old. Consider whether rejecting needed help is wisdom or foolish pride as you ponder our offer and the fate of your people."

With a jerk of his head, Gorvia signaled his men to follow him as he marched out of the city gates.

Tokarha gave Macander a squeeze. He didn't have to tell her they had just been threatened.