Seeker

In an earlier century, the Scottish estate was wilder and yet more populated. Life was centered on the castle, perched high on a promontory above the river. And yet on this day, the stone fortress was both motionless and noiseless when viewed from the outside. The residents kept themselves invisible when the Dreads were present, remaining indoors, and leaving only by the back gate when errands called.

It was afternoon on a cool summer day, and the Young Dread pirouetted in the castle’s sand courtyard. Her left foot was on the ground, turning her swiftly in circles as her arms and her right foot blocked the objects thrown at her by the Middle Dread.

“Catch! Block! Block! Catch!” he called out to her, slinging large rocks and sharp knives her way.

The Young caught a knife and threw it back, blocked two rocks with her leg, then caught a third rock in her left hand.

“Faster!” he called.

Her left leg ached from her foot to her hip, but this meant little. In the training of the Dreads, some part of one’s body was always in pain. She sent her awareness into the muscles, ordering them to move more quickly. To an outsider, her arms would look like a blur—if an outsider had dared to watch them.

The Middle threw a series of knives, each aimed with deadly precision at vulnerable parts of her body.

“Catch, catch, catch!” he yelled.

With each catch, she had to throw the knife back, aiming it just as precisely at him as he had at her. The Middle Dread kept up with her so easily, he had ample time to find unpleasant objects to hurl at her between knives. A small length of chain and a horseshoe came next.

“Block!” he called. “Faster!”

Her master was approaching. While most of her mind was occupied by the bombardment of missiles, a small piece of her watched the Old Dread draw near. She noted that his motions were slower even than they had been the previous day. For more than a week she had watched him wind down into dreamlike movements. He drifted to a stop nearby and very slowly lifted a hand, bringing her training session to a close.

The knives and stones stopped being launched from the Middle Dread’s hands and were replaced around his body or on the ground. The Young Dread untwisted herself from the pirouette to walk toward her master. As she did, one final stone flew from the Middle’s hands toward her head, fast and vicious, hoping to catch her unaware. She raised an arm at the last moment to bat it down onto the sand.

“We will walk,” the Old Dread said. His voice was so quiet and slow it was difficult for her to hear him. His eyelids hung half closed.

Left alone, the Middle Dread pulled out his whipsword and moved off around the perimeter of the deserted courtyard. The Young and Old passed slowly through the castle’s main gate and headed toward the woods.

“You will not like to hear this,” he began. “It is time for me to rest.”

“We have been stretched out so many times, Master,” she said. “Is there no rest for you then?”

“There is. Yet not enough. The rest I speak of will be longer. You have made small jumps with me, a dozen years, a score, two score. I must stay in the darkness much longer.”

“Will you sit, Master?” Nearby was a large stone that was handy for sitting, and they were walking at a pace so slow, it seemed pointless to continue on.

He shook his head. In an ordinary man, this motion would have taken a few seconds. For her master, it lasted half a minute.

“All my effort is required to stay upright and moving. If I sit, I am done. I will not rest until I am There.”

The Young Dread looked over her shoulder and through the gate to where the Middle was practicing with his whipsword, sending it around his body so quickly, it gave the impression of a deadly black cloud. If her master truly meant to go, she would be left with the Middle, the two of them alone for years.

“How long?” she asked.

“Difficult to say. A hundred. Perhaps two hundred.”

“Two hundred years!”

“Perhaps more, child.”

It was a shocking number.

After the Young Dread had shown herself to be a good student, and she’d said goodbye to her family, they had spent a year in the darkness of that place, emerging to a world one year older, while she had not aged at all. She’d spent another year training. Then they had gone to that dark place for two years. And so on, alternating her training with what the Dreads called “stretching out” or “rest,” and which really meant leaving time and place behind. The longest jump had been fifty years, so that, in all, a hundred years had passed since her master had first led her away from her family home, and yet she was just twelve years old. It was now the year 1570 or thereabouts.

“It is not so long as you may think. When your training has gone a little further, you may make a jump of as many years.”

“How will my training go further, with you gone?”

The Old Dread stopped, placing a hand on each of her arms. “The Middle has many valuable skills. There is much you can learn from him.”

The Young Dread said nothing to this. She hoped her silence would speak of the Middle’s temper, his cruelty, and even things her master had never seen—like the young man at the inn, the previous Young Dread, the boy who had been stabbed for objecting to the Middle’s behavior.

Her master’s eyelids were open only a slit, yet she could feel him surveying her closely.

“You are strong,” he told her, as though he had heard all of her thoughts. “You can defend yourself.”

“Can I?” she wondered.

The other Young Dread, that boy at the inn, had been older than she was, and he had not been able to protect himself. Or had there been something else in the boy’s eyes, a desire to be free? Had he been willing to die if it meant he would escape from the Middle?

There was a very long silence. She watched her master’s chest moving in and out, like waves rolling up a wide beach. At last, he spoke again.

“It is why you have trained, child. You are the Young, for you are the youngest. Yet you are a Dread, just as I am, just as the Middle is. You decide what is just, as any Dread must. The Middle understands you will be alive when I wake. Or I shall be angry.”

She had never seen her master angry, and so could not judge whether this would be a frightening prospect for the Middle Dread. Her master was old. Though she’d caught glimpses of his skill here and there, he’d been tired for all the years she’d known him. The Middle still deferred to the Old, but the Young Dread wondered how long that respect would last.

“I can guess the thoughts that pass through your mind, child,” he told her. “I am a very different man when I have rested. I should have gone years ago. I was delayed by … your arrival.”

Caused by the untimely death of the previous Young Dread, she thought.

“Now I am long overdue.”

“How will you wake up, two hundred years hence, Master?”

The hint of a smile played across the old man’s lips.

“That is a secret you will learn in time. When I am rested, there is much I will teach you. All of it. You will understand.”

The Old Dread reached out a hand to steady himself against her shoulder, then sat heavily onto the ground.

“Call the Middle to me now, child. He has the athame. Lose no time. I must rest now.”

His eyes were almost entirely closed. His shoulders were moving downward, as though curling in upon themselves. The Young Dread turned toward the castle and ran.