Book Two: Chapter 14: Keeping it Shut

Book Two: Chapter 14

Keeping it Shut

Brenner was out in the yard before Roen even made it there, already fussing with Roen’s horse, his hands moving over the girth strap like he’d been waiting for something to go wrong, or maybe just waiting for Roen to show up and see him doing it.

“Going for more of that elusive timber?” Brenner asked.

“The first lot was overpriced. I am not the man I used to be; Sera has taught me well.”

“Mmm, right.” He yanked the strap tight, stepped back, and handed Roen the reins. “Three hours out, three back. Last time you came home empty. I don’t need an answer, but if you’re not back by dark, I’ll ride after you. So pick a road you want me finding you on.”

“I’m going south, way past the glass,” Roen said. “There’s a valley there, you can find me in it.”

Brenner just nodded, like that was all the truth he needed for now, and turned away, heading back to the woodpile without another word.

Roen found himself back in the valley, taking the same measurements all over again, and again after that, until eight sessions had blurred together over the two weeks Sera and Milo were gone. Every time, it started the same way: making sure he was alone in the valley, shrugging off his coat, opening the ledger on that flat stone, and every time it ended with him sitting on the stone, staring at the pages he liked less and less.

By the third session, his body, which had forgotten what Aether felt like over the past few months, had already learned the routine, and there was something about that, something that made him uneasy. He’d set the ledger down, and before he’d even opened it, and he could feel his Aether almost warming, reaching for the opening like a dog that hears someone at the door, and he’d notice it, dislike it, but go on with the training anyway, because that was what he was there to do.

He filled the ledger with measurements, plotting the points against time, and for lack of anything better, tracking his Aether capacity as it curved in a way that didn’t fit any rule he knew. At first, he tried to tell himself that maybe the rapid depletion of Aether from the precious fights had somehow pushed his reserves higher each time, because he’d felt that before, that kind of growth after you burn yourself out and come back from the edge of death. He’d rebuilt himself from that edge before, in that first life, and he remembered how his limit would climb, then level off, finding its ceiling, but this was different. This just kept climbing, higher and higher, from what he remembered on the road to Millhaven, the fights with the Wisp and Hollow, the incident with the Baron, all the way to that last fight. Every time he channelled, it got easier. The numbers didn’t lie: his Aether was racing back to where he’d been at the end, like decades, centuries of growth were pouring into him all at once, as if the power remembered the man and not the body, and had just been waiting to come home.

That was the first thing he figured out, and honestly, he could almost believe it was possible, as it did make some sense. The second thing was worse, though, because it was about the lid he’d put on his power, the way he’d been holding it down all this time.

He measured that, too, because the slips were the whole reason he’d started testing in the first place. The numbers spelt it out, what all those little slips and not-so-little ones had been trying to tell him: holding it down was costing him more every single day, because the pressure kept building due to the growth, the lid took more of him to keep in place, and every time he let some out here in the empty valley, it bought him a few days of peace back home.

The third thing he found, there weren’t any numbers for. It was in the quality of his Aether. The power came up…eagerly, for lack of a better word. His Aether had never been eager in the three hundred years of working and studying it. Aether in general was weather or water. It was a quantifiable medium, as indifferent as arithmetic is. His shot up to meet him at the first opening, and it went where he sent it a half-thought early, anticipating, and once, on the fourth session, when a hawk stooped past the perimeter and startled him, the power moved toward the motion before he’d decided anything at all, and he had to haul it back, and stood afterward in the frost with his heart going hard.

This narrative has been purloined without the author’s approval. Report any appearances on Amazon.

Eager, and just a little bit ahead of him. He sat there on the flat stone, turning that over in his mind, and couldn’t make it mean anything good, or anything he could handle. It had to be part of why the suppression was slipping. It wasn’t just the regression, or maybe not only that. It was the white room, the thing waiting there, but that was a question with no bottom, and he’d already learned everything the field and the ledger could tell him. For answers, he’d need the books, the deep ones, the ones he only half-remembered.

He packed up the ledger and took the long way home, letting the cold and the quiet settle in around him.

Back at the inn, his absences hadn’t gone unnoticed by Bess.

“Timber,” Bess said on the fourth occasion, setting his supper down flat. “Either it’s very beautiful timber, or you’re courting someone in a field, and if it’s the second, I’ll tell you now, Sera will find the field.”

“It’s beautiful timber.”