Sun's Heart

Chapter 6 - Fate and Fortune

The lonely man in the cover of nightfall stared at his palms, side-by-side and backed against the fire cooking a rabbit to perfection. "He refuses to delve into his power," he murmured. "He uses what's on the surface and fears to go deeper."

His tall frame was hunched, as though to ward off the cold, though the forest's air was hardly more than chilled.

"Do you blame him?" Eleda said. "No one's able to teach him what he needs to know. He's probably scared of what he can do with it, and what he has done with it."

"To think," Del grumbled, "that losing control of one's power is considered normal. Pfeh."

"Power is not all," Mae said, "but control is strength."

"You're saying he has none?" the lonely man asked the old seer.

"I'm saying without control, he'll never turn his power into strength. Fear was the boy's teacher, but he restrains it. He doesn't control it. It is the difference between hiding one's fear, and dominating it. If he were to be guided, he would be ready."

Del tsked at her. "You make less sense the more you blab. Were you ever actually a seer?"

"That's what made me so good at my job, dearie."

"Don't dearie me. You know how I despise your foul lot."

"What, because I saw your death and you didn't believe me? You've always been prideful. I suppose it runs in the family, doesn't it?"

"Why, you reeking, cow-faced hag—"

"Stop it, you two," the man said. Silence fell. "Mae is right. The boy requires guidance."

Eleda said as quietly, "There are many here who would rather see him die, Talaris."

The man named Talaris sighed and lowered his hands, stared into the fire where his rabbit rotated. It was nearly done. "I know. But you know I would never let that happen. He's far too valuable." His right palm itched deep within the bone. He flexed his fingers, a pointless act he knew would do nothing to relieve it. "I will go to him."

Mae gasped, Eleda murmured soft prayers, and Del joined many others in voicing their opinions of why he should do no such thing. Their voices clambered, rang through his ears.

"Please," Eleda whispered, "you mustn't. You know what will happen if you go to them. You know the prophecy as well as I."

"He knows it better," Mae said. "Let someone else give the guidance he needs, boy. You aren't needed for it."

Talaris smiled wryly. "'Boy?' You haven't called me that for so long I'd nearly forgotten what it feels like."

"Because I thought you'd grown up. Evidently, I was wrong. You're risking Ketsa for sake of your pride."

"Don't, Aja," Gurdei growled, stirring at last from wherever he'd been hidden.

Talaris raised his eyebrows. "Gurdei. It's been a long time."

"Don't."

"Is that all you ever say?" Del asked with disgust. "Whenever you pop up again, you just say the same thing. How about 'no' every once in a while?"

"Shut up, Del. Gurdei, why shouldn't I?"

"Bad." He drifted off, then came back and grunted, "Bad, Aja. Bad. Don't, Aja."

"Yeah, Aja," Del muttered. "As much as I dislike the barbarous meathead, I agree with him. No good will come of this. That lunatic in the Rift will have his grubby mitts all over us."

"I will deal with him when I must," Talaris whispered. He grabbed the spit with his rabbit on it. "I don't want to live forever, any more than fate wants me to. I will die when I must, and you will be free."

Mae's gravelly voice lowered. "Prophecies be damned."

"Fate is a relentless master. When you think you've escaped, it will attack from another direction. It can't be changed."

"You don't know that," Eleda said.

"No. But you don't, either." They quieted, and did not argue.

He tore into the rabbit with hunger he didn't feel and let its steaming greases stream down his chin. Memories of rabbit, freshly cooked and seasoned to perfection, flooded him from all around. Some were his, most weren't. They were welcome, and he savored them.

The boy could afford no more time on his own. Talaris had seen it before. A promising young mage in the world on his own, learning far better than those in classrooms, lets his overwhelming innate powers consume him and turn him into another eerie landmark to be pondered by generations to come.

"Where will we start?" Mae finally asked.

"Sand Sea," he said around a mouthful of steaming, succulent meat. He swallowed and gulped water from his waterskin. "The only place I've never been able to enter. There is a weakening within the world. A change so profound," he muttered, "it's a wonder Ketsa hasn't shaken to pieces these last several days. I have reason to believe it may have something to do with the Hearts."

"There are less painful ways to kill yourself," Del hmphed, "than giving yourself to those savages."

"I've never believed in fate," the seer said. "And I've certainly never believed in taunting it. What makes you so sure this change is in Sand Sea?"

He smiled and rubbed the itching black mark on his right palm over the legs of his trousers. "It draws me to the Rift. I think it might have somehow...weakened one of the locks. That would explain this surge of power from there."

Del muttered dryly, "You make less sense than the seer."

He tossed the remains of the cooked rabbit aside and stretched. "My instincts tell me to prepare for the worst."

"Remind you of the old days?" Eleda asked, laughter aloft in her voice.

"Yes. And not in a good way."

Talaris looked around at the shadowed trees sheltering the licking flames of his fire pit. An owl swooped down and captured its prey in deadly talons several yards away. A den of foxes slumbered nearby. All around him, life flourished and trickled on. Time carrying them forward and further from the tragedies of the past.

"I'll free us from this," he whispered to the empty air. "I won't let Asura take what he wants."

***

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