Chapter 1

Trials

I’d have to say it was when the eagle’s talon went into my eye socket that I realized hunting might not be for me. Obviously, my mom was horrified. I mean, she had good cause to be; an eagle was attacking my face.

See, in my society, everyone had a niche. Hunters are the heroes, the idols of our little village. I mean, I grew up just dying to be like Sklypna. She was huntmaster, had been for wends and wends; could see in the dark like a hawk, could cross rivers and jungles alike without making a sound. She was incredible. I dreamed of being a hunter, of moving through the brush like her, dropping to the forest floor, hunting beasts, and coming home with it hauled up on ropes, the whole village cheering.

My parents knew this, obviously, so they encouraged me. There was, however, a slight hitch in the plan. Hunters are among the very few mages the Tironash could claim as our own. We had Healers, Hunters, and the occasional Shepherd. Well, also the rare Mask, but they weren’t welcome long anyway.

I never saw a Shepherd myself, they didn’t come often, and to be honest, I don’t know what color they practiced, don’t even know why they’re called that. I was told they preserved food, stopped it from going bad. One of the Shepherds of yore, Zamani, would go out with the Hunters. They say he used his preservation magics to stun beasts and stop intruders in their tracks. I mean, it’s a story told, but like I said, I never saw one. I can’t speak to the truth of the matter.

Well, as you know, magic’s not something you can just… learn. You either got it, or you don’t. Good luck telling me, though. I was going to be a Hunter; I had to be. So, I practiced with my bow, I snuck around the village on the regular, I worked on my strength training, and finally, wends down the road, I did the test.

Sklypna herself did the testing; she personally bore witness to each potential Hunter’s abilities. I was starstruck, slightly, and determined not to let her down.

“First, you must prove to me you can move like the wind. You stay here, count to five hundred. When you finish, track my movement, find my resting spot, climb a tree, and drop on me from it, like you would a boar.”

“Yes, Huntmaster.”

The oh-so-very tall woman strode away into the trees, her muscles bulging through her leathers, her contours visible through every piece of clothing. Her body moved like a jaguar’s, every step and sway perfect and deliberate. M’rfae’s arm, she was a sight.

In seconds, she was gone from sight. I sat myself down, and I counted. I counted long and hard, making sure I got every number. I was probably being watched; they’d know if I got up too soon. So, I sat on the dirt counting carefully until finally, after forever, I hit five hundred.

I got up, dusted off my leathers, and started into the trees.

I probably should have made that clear. We were isolated. I was in a village just south of the eastern range of the Jaggeds.

…The Jagged Mountains? Southern Runnir. Yeah, in north-central Kladbiche. We didn’t call it that, though. It was just the Tangle. It was… the world. It was all we knew. Sure, we’d heard tales of strange folk across the rivers far to the south, but we had no idea about the short men on the other side of the mountains or down south, let alone the horn-less sky folk. Certainly none of the other folks of the world. We just had our Tangle.

Anyway, back to the trial. She’d told me to track her ‘like I would a boar,’ which meant from above. I was used to jungle, the trees. Tall, high-reaching canopy and thick branches. I grew up in the trees, we made our homes in them, so moving through the branches was nothing new. I had trained my entire life for it. So, starting my way down, I jumped from branch to branch where I could, or rushing along quiet patches of dirt where I couldn’t.

I scanned for signs of her movement as I went. The floor was dark, given the thick canopy, but Hunters tuned their eyes for the dark. All my life, I’d been training, searching, practicing for this. As I searched the forest floor, I caught sight of broken twigs and followed them down, noting a footprint in the moss showing me direction. Sclypna was intentionally leaving hints, I knew that, but she was way sneakier than any prey we tended to hunt. She was testing my ability to hunt boars and capybara, not other hunters.

I followed the light trail of footprints, broken twigs, and markings on trunks, careful to hop branch to branch wherever possible, making as little noise as I could. After what felt like ages of travel, I found her. She sat between two trees eating a piece of meat noisily. I crept through the branches, trying my best not to alert her.

After a short eternity of crawling along the trees, I managed to get myself above her. I lowered myself to a branch below me, so as not to break my legs on the fall and dropped. My arms wrapped around her neck, and I pinned her to the ground, flinging her back. She laughed and patted my back, and I let her up.

“I’m impressed, little Tabby. Didn’t hear you coming for a second.”

I hated that nickname. I still do.

“Thank you, Huntmaster. What is my next challenge?”

“Your next challenge can wait until we’ve slept. Let us return home, celebrate your passing with flying colors.”

I could barely sleep. Sklypna had not only passed me, but enthusiastically passed me! I was over the trees; my heart hadn’t stopped drumming since I dropped on her. Rest eluded me for at least a cent before my exhaustion caught up with me.

After waking, I left my room to find the Huntmaster sitting with my mother eating over a fire. I guess I should clarify that our houses were built into the Tangle’s giant sturdy trees. Bigger than you’re used to out here, trunks nearly as thick as a house. We built huts and whatnot mounted to the trees, built on branches, and would carve out little rooms that the Healers helped with (healing the wounds in the trees, so it wouldn’t rot or grow back). Bridges connected our ‘houses,’ but we usually didn’t build so high we couldn’t just get back to ground level.

But yeah, Sklypna and my mother were talking.

“She was telling me that you sounded quite proud of her in the trial.”

“I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t impressed, Tabula. Your daughter has been training hard for this, it’s quite evident.”

I laid down on the planks outside my room, three ‘floors’ above them up the tree, and tuned my ears, listening hard.

“She certainly has. It’s been her dream to be a Hunter all her life. She really looks up to you. I guess you’re used to hearing that, though.”

“I suppose. It never gets old, though. I love that children aspire to be Hunters. It’s a necessary profession. I mean, we guard the camp, we get the food, we map the area. That’s the problem, though, is too many young ones think my job is all bows and knives. It’s mostly foraging. Sure, we bring home meat, but we also have fishers for that. Hunters bring back herbs, vegetables and fruits, fungi, the whole nine.”

“You don’t have to explain it to me, Sklyp,” my mother laughed coyly. She finished Hunter’s training in her youth, all the way to taming her first beast, but was injured in a fight. She lost the use of one arm, and the other entirely.

That hardly stopped her. She could still track with ease, walked silent as the night, and somehow learned how to shoot a bow with her feet. During my crafting phase, I even designed a special foot-bow. Isaagorn, the local bowyer, used my design and made it custom for her. She’d worked as a village sentry ever since.

I remember her trying to teach me to use this bow that I designed my damn self, and her just laughing.

“Why can’t I use it right?” I would whine. “I made the thing!”

“You can’t learn to use your legs like arms while you still have arms,” she would say while stroking my hair. “Just like you can’t hear like the blind while you still see.”

“So why don’t we just chop off my arms?”

She wouldn’t ever snap, just hold me tight and whisper, “No, no, I would never wish this on anyone. I would have you go your whole life never missing a single piece of your body, let alone both arms.”

“But you get along fine!” I’d say.

“I do. Just because I am still strong, just because I’m not lessened by my injury does not make it a boon for others.”

“I guess,” I would mutter as I shot another foot arrow into the jungle, meters off of my target.

But anyway, she and the Huntmaster were going back and forth. They always had a good relationship. I think they were involved sometime in the past, after my dad’s death. I never learned much about him. My mom always told me she’d tell me when I was older and… Well, we’ll get there. I just know he was a fisherman. A damn fine one if his friends are to be trusted, but come on, what are they gonna say? ‘Yeah, your dad kinda sucked, but we let him fish with us anyway?’

“Are you worried about the next trials at all, Tabby?”

Yes, she called my mom Tabby too. Tabula. Tabanica. Yeah, it’s a little confusing. Sorry.

“No,” my mother replied without second thought. “She’s been training all her life, like I said.”

“Has she shown any sign of magic for the final test?”

She sighed and grabbed the pot from the fire. The answer mulled around in her mouth while she poured into cups, then stayed a while longer while she sipped her guayusa. She always had a pot after waking to get her perked up, then drank throughout her watch to keep herself sharp.

Oh, you guys don’t have that, do you? I’ve only ever seen it in the Kladbiche. I need to go back and snag some seeds, see if I can grow some out here, I swear I could sell it by the barrel.

It’s an herb native to that area; pretty similar to tea. You boil it hard, pour it off, and it get a tasty drink. The difference is tea gets bitter if you leave it in too long. Guayusa can just keep going until it’s strong enough to strip a boar. It’s also stronger, richer, earthier, gives you more energy, least in my experience. It’s less versatile than tea, though.

Well, I say that, but we only ever roasted it. After harvesting, we’d crush the leaves and roast them in an oven just a tad, then load them into little boxes. I don’t know what would happen if you smoked them like a black tea, steamed them like a green… Who knows? Regardless, now I really want some, and even if I left now, I wouldn’t have any for wends. Ugh.

Anyway, she was sipping on her guayusa when my heart sank.

“I honestly don’t know, Sklyp. She’s never shown an affinity for magic before. Lots of Hunters show signs pretty early. I know I was hearing my mom’s thoughts before I did my trials.”

“And many don’t. We can’t blame her for not knowing a spell before we teach it to her.”

“But young casters are known for summoning up little balls of raw magic and bursting them. Shouldn’t she have been hitting me with bubbles of red magic by now?”

“We’ll have to see. It’s the final trial, so we’re not doing it todess. I’m sure she could hardly even sleep, so I’m waiting ‘til after her next sleep for the next one. Tell her she has the dess off when she awakens.”

I didn’t hear the rest of the conversation, I was too busy going back to my room and crying. It shouldn’t have hit me that hard, but the idea that my dream job, the one I trained for and had just excelled at, would be out of my reach because of something I couldn’t do anything about just… devastated me.

I cried for a while, then tried to tame the beetles that crawled on my walls. It didn’t work, not like I knew how to cast a spell. Hell, I didn’t know how to draw up magic at all, let alone form it. I’d never been magically inclined.

My dearest, closest friend, Fylhoraeth, was a training Healer, and we had sat down and tried to make me cast before. She wasn’t very good at describing the feeling, though, so every effort proved fruitless.

This in mind, I closed my eyes, meditated on my pain for a bit and, when I felt calm, I wrote a short message explaining my need for assistance, and wrapped it around an arrow. I grabbed my bow off the wall (hand-carved out of rasp-wood, gorgeous thing, I miss it dearly), and shot the message to her door. My aim proved true, it stuck in the wood right in front of her room.

The long-haired beauty popped her head out of the tiny hut, stepped on the arrow, read the note, then looked up at me. I made a “get over here” gesture and stepped back into my hut.

I have to get it this time, I told myself. I have to.