Evasion
The knock Merauve ordered last night awakened him well before dawn. The sharp rap of a roundsman who knew the business of waking officers at morning watch rotation, and the dressing down if he did not. Merauve’s eyes snapped open, consciousness arriving with the instant clarity of a man whose survival had long depended on such transitions.
“Acknowledged,” he called, rolling from his bed. Outside his window, the world wore the grey half-light that preceded dawn.
His morning ablutions proceeded as habit. By the time he dressed in his practice leathers, supple brown that moved like a second skin, the eastern windows began their slow brightening toward proper day.
The archery range lay empty in the pre-dawn stillness. Merauve selected a longbow from the armory, testing its draw weight and balance. The familiar tension helped settle the restless energy that plagued his sleep. The lighting wasn’t ideal, but the quiet stillness was.
Taking up his bow in a relaxed grip, he focused on the mechanics of each draw and release. The range was unconventional in that targets were arrayed at varying distances and directions. Breathe in, draw, exhale halfway, hold, release. The arrows found their marks: center, center, just left of center.
Thunk
Another arrow, driven with unnecessary force into the target’s heart. The wood split slightly around the shaft. Merauve stepped back, breathing harder than the exercise warranted, and reached for Tachet.
The blade left his hand in one fluid motion, spinning end over end to bury itself in a closer target’s center with a satisfying thud. Working through frustration rather than forms: he could hear his old instructor’s disapproval in the wind.
By the time he cleaned and stored his equipment, the outpost was beginning its daily stirring. The physical exertion did its work to clear and focus his mind.
He located the orderly in the keep’s main corridor, hands clasped behind his back in the patient stance of someone who learned to wait on officers.
“Dispatches,” Merauve said without preamble, withdrawing his carefully prepared letters from his coat. “Have these to the courier before he leaves at second bell.” He handed off the sealed documents regarding the deArthis holdings and provincial intelligence requests. “And send word to the Major that I request a brief meeting at his convenience. Nothing urgent.”
“Also,” he continued, producing the sealed note to the kitchen, “today’s meal arrangements. See that they understand the timing is precise.” The orderly nodded and hurried away.
The sun climbed above the eastern wall as he reached the tower stairs, painting the stone corridors in variations of burnt orange. The tower guards nodded their acknowledgment as Merauve approached, but something in their posture suggested unease.
“Anything to note?” Merauve inquired.
The senior guard cleared his throat. “Quiet night, sir. Though after second watch, there was singing. Very soft-like, barely audible. Lasted maybe a quarter-hour, then stopped.”
Merauve nodded curtly as though this was to be expected. The last people he needed scared were these guards. He’d seen massive damage done by rumors. They spread through garrison ranks like plague through a crowded port. Fear bred whispers, whispers bred speculation, and speculation bred the kind of wild tales that could undermine an entire operation.
If it’s expected, give them something to expect... “I want you to keep detailed logs of any all such incidents,” Merauve instructed, withdrawing a small leather journal from his coat and handing it to the senior guard. “Time, duration, any details you can recall. Nothing is too small to note.”
The familiar scrape of the bolt sliding back announced his arrival like a curtain rising on the day’s performance.
The room beyond greeted him with a tableau of quiet domesticity that somehow managed to be both endearing and faintly irritating. Elenden sat at the sole table, morning light streaming through the barred windows to cast his profile in quiet peace. A small stack of dishes sat beside the door: last night’s meal, cleaned and arranged tidily.
“Good morning, Elenden,” Merauve said, crossing the room and settling into his chair with practiced grace. “I trust you slept well? The accommodations are adequate?”
“Better than expected.” Elenden’s fingers traced the grain of the table’s wood, “I believe I have you to thank for my treatment thus far here.”
Merauve smiled. “And you, for your continued cooperation.”
The simple threat hung between them. Merauve struck his flint, drew smoke, and studied his subject through the blue haze. “Yesterday’s tale of dancing lessons was... illuminating.”
“Was it?”
“Oh yes.” Merauve’s smile carried just enough edge to cut. “Though I confess myself curious about what you chose not to tell. Your friend by the pool, for instance. The wild girl who taught you such fascinating perspectives on truth. Surely she had a name?”
Elenden’s expression didn’t change, but his hands went still on the table. “She did.”
“Yet you didn’t share it.”
“No.”
“Protecting her?”
“Protecting you.” The words came without hesitation, without dramatics. Simply stated fact.
Merauve breathed the warm smoke in, buying time while his mind processed this unexpected response. Exhaled slowly. “I beg your pardon?”
“You’re trying to harvest fruit that’s still green on the branch, Inquisitor. Rush the picking, and you get only bitterness.” Elenden met his gaze directly. “It’s not time yet, though I can’t say why.”
“How considerate,” Merauve said, his voice silk over steel. “Though I find myself wondering if these tales of childhood dancing lessons are a way to avoid discussing more... substantial matters.”
“You find truth dancing boring.”
Another direct hit. Merauve’s jaw tightened almost imperceptibly. “I find evasion tedious.”
This made Elenden open up in a laugh that seemed to rise from the very foundations of the earth itself. It didn’t bark or break: it bloomed, rich and rolling, carrying the weight of wild places and growing things. The sound filled the stone chamber as if the tower itself had suddenly remembered what joy sounded like.
Merauve started. In fifteen years of breaking men’s spirits, he had heard every sound the human throat could make: screams, sobs, whimpers, the death rattle, even the maniacal laughter of the broken. But this? This was something from another world: unguarded, unweaponized, utterly without agenda.
Against all reason, against the frustration of moments ago, against every fiber of his trained composure, Merauve felt his own mouth impossibly twitching toward a smile. The laughter was dangerously invitational, carrying with it the wild suggestion that perhaps the world was far stranger and more delightful than it appeared.
“Evasion,” Elenden finally spoke, wiping tears from his eyes with the intentionality that marked all his movements. “Quite; if you’ll permit me the grace of explaining the irony.” His voice still carried traces of mirth, like the last notes of a song. “May I?”
Merauve studied the length of his roll of his tobacco, unsatisfied with the evenness of the burn. He struck his flint again with steady hands, the flame catching as he drew smoke deep into his lungs. The exhale carried away the last echoes of that laughter.
“By all means,” he said. “Continue.”
I trained in truth dancing in Whinn’s class for two years at a regular rhythm, until my tenth birthday. The change began with an invitation to tea.
I came home from the moors one afternoon to find Whinn’s modest carriage in our courtyard, her old mare looking distinctly unimpressive next to our stable’s grander occupants. That was unusual: Whinn never visited our estate before. The relationship between teacher and noble families was carefully bounded by the walls of her studio in Cobb, like water staying within its banks.
My mother received her in the blue parlor, the one reserved for guests of particular importance. I glimpsed them through the doorway as I passed: my mother pouring tea with her perfect hostess grace, Whinn sitting with that straight-backed poise that made her seem taller than she was. Their voices carried the low, serious tone of negotiations, the kind of conversation that changes the shape of things.
I was studiously absent, attempting to avoid whatever decision was being made about my future. When the tea was finished and Whinn’s carriage rattled away down our winding drive, mother found me in the barn inspecting the new litter of kittens. She wore a look of satisfaction that meant she got exactly what she wanted.
“Elen,” she said. She hesitated at the dusty hay bale, then gathered her skirts and sat beside me anyway. “Mistress Whinn has made an interesting proposal.”
The way she said it made my stomach clench.
“Beginning next ten, you’ll be training with her exclusively. The other students...” she paused, brushing stray wisps of hay from the bale, “have progressed as far as their natural gifts will take them.”
“There’s more,” my mother continued, pausing long enough to bait me into meeting her eyes. “Next year’s Harvest Festival, you remember we’re hosting...” She let the moment hang. “Elen, you’re going to dance at our Harvest Festival!”
The Harvest Festival of the Northern Provinces was no small thing. Every three years, it rotated among the great houses, and this would be our turn to host. Lords and ladies would come from across the region, bringing their finest horses, their best archers, their champion swordsmen. There would be contests and games scattered across our moors for days: hawking competitions in the high meadows, archery tournaments in the eastern fields, riding races that would thunder across the ancient sheep paths.
In all my memory, the Northern Provinces hadn’t held a Truth Dance, but this year, my mother schemed that our provincial festival would aspire to echo the imperial version. It was said that the Emperor maintained a personal academy of truth dancers: masters who trained solely for the imperial court, and performed at the culmination of the capital’s Harvest Festival. Rumors spoke of invitation-only dances so profound they could reveal the loyalty of courtiers, so beautiful they could bring hardened generals to tears. Whether such tales were true or mere fancy was the subject of debate at high ladies’ teas.
“I’ll be eleven,” I said, because it was the only defense my overwhelmed mind could grasp.
“Yes,” my mother smiled, reaching out as if to touch my hair, then stopping herself just short, her hand hovering for a moment before settling back in her lap. “I’m so proud of you, Elen. What an honor for our family to represent a tradition older than our family’s keep.”
The exclusivity of my new training arrangement created complications I didn’t anticipate. Of the girls dismissed from Whinn’s classes, three came from families of minor nobility themselves: not great houses like ours, but proud bloodlines nonetheless. The Fenworths held their modest manor for two centuries. The Greys could trace their lineage back to the old kingdom. And the Ashfords... well, the Ashfords were always touchy about slights, real or imagined.
Word travels quickly in the countryside, particularly word about family honor. Within a fortnight, my solitary walks to and from Cobb began to take on a distinctly less peaceful character.
It started small: stones thrown from behind hedgerows, always from too far away to see who had thrown them. Rude words shouted across market squares by boys who melted into crowds before I could identify them. “Dancing princess!” they would call, or “Look, it’s Dancing Lady Elen!” The kind of harassment that might have been simple mischief if not for the obvious orchestration behind it all.
I mentioned none of this to my mother. Her protective instincts would have meant an end to my lessons, guards for my walks: the careful isolation she always preferred against any risk. In the worst case my young mind could conceive, she might recommend backing out of the advanced lessons altogether, and I didn’t want to risk that. Besides, I was learning things with Whinn that went far beyond the simple sequences I had mastered in the group classes.
“Truth dancing is submission, not performance,” she told me during our first exclusive session, her studio feeling strangely vast with only the two of us in it. “What you’ve learned so far are the letters. Now we must teach you to read the words, and eventually, to speak the language.”
She was teaching me to listen, really listen, to the world around me. The way the afternoon light slanted through her windows carried information about the season, the weather, the time of day. The sound of footsteps on cobblestones outside could tell you about the walker’s mood, their urgency, sometimes even their intentions. All of nature speaks the truth, she said, if you knew how to hear it; only humans forgot the language, and worse: they learned to lie. The first step was teaching me to listen.
Which is why, two moons into my new training regimen, I heard them coming long before they showed themselves.
I was walking the familiar path home from Cobb, following a shortcut about halfway to our estate on the old sheep track. It wound through a copse of birch trees and cut off a whole ten minutes from the horse track. The afternoon was growing long, washing everything in shades of copper and amber. I was thinking about the new sequence Whinn taught me, “River Finding Sea”; it required such precise timing between breath and movement.
Instead, I found myself slowing, then stopping entirely in the shadow of the birches.
Something was wrong with the landscape around me. Not obviously wrong: the trees still rustled with their proper autumn whisper, the sheep still grazed in the distance with their usual placid concentration. But underneath the normal sounds, there was something else. A quality of waiting. Of held breath.
Four of them, I realized, though I couldn’t have said how I knew. Two ahead of me, where the path curved around a large outcropping of stone. Two behind, following me from the town. They thought they were being clever, and they were, I suppose, timing their approach for this stretch where the trees would muffle sound and the curves would prevent me from running in any direction.
My heart began that peculiar rhythm of fear mixed with something else: not excitement, exactly, but a kind of wakeful attention that made everything around me seem suddenly more vivid. The late afternoon light, the texture of the path beneath my feet, the way my body felt balanced and ready. I set down my satchel, careful to keep it out of the way, and took a deep breath, letting the moor air fill my lungs and settle in my chest.
They emerged from behind the stone outcropping swaggering. Boys trying to seem more dangerous than they were, one of them tripping a bit as he came around. I recognized two of them: Marcus Ashford, fifteen and already growing into his father’s heavy build, and one of the Fenworth twins—Peter, I thought, though I had never been able to tell them apart.
“Well, look what we have here.” Marcus crossed his arms like he’d seen the bailiff do. “The little dancing lord.”
The other two had moved to block my retreat, completing their carefully planned ambush. They were older, bigger, and they outnumbered me four to one. By any reasonable calculation, I should be terrified.
Instead, I found myself settling into a stance Whinn frequently started our stretching with: “Stone in the Sun”—weight balanced perfectly between both feet, hands loose at my sides, breathing deep and steady.
“My father says your mother’s turned you into a proper little lady,” Peter Fenworth added, then spit. “Says you’re a disgrace to the region.”
They began to close the circle. Marcus flexed his hands into fists, clearly intending to be the first to test whether the dancing lord would fight back.
“Let’s see if the dancing princess bleeds like the rest of us.”
But as he stepped forward, swinging clumsily at where my head had been, I was already moving.
Water Flowing Around Stone.
The movement felt as natural as breathing. I turned, shifted my weight, let his momentum carry him past me while I simply... wasn’t where he expected me to be. He stumbled, caught himself, turned with growing frustration.
Peter tried next, rushing me with the direct strategy of a tackle. But I spent two years learning to read the intentions written in the body’s preparation, in the subtle shifts of weight that preceded action. At the last possible moment, as his arms reached to wrap around my legs, I leaped.
Mist Rising from the Valley.
My feet barely cleared his hunched back as he dove beneath me, the fabric of my breeches brushing his shoulder blades. I landed behind him in perfect balance while he crashed face-first into the birch tree with a sound like a thunderclap, dead leaves from last season showering down around him like autumn snow.
The other two came at me together, perhaps thinking coordination would succeed where individual effort had failed. But they moved like townspeople, thinking with their anger instead of their heads. I saw their intentions written across their faces, telegraphed in their posture, announced in the air around them.
Wind Through the Branches.
I flowed between them, under one reaching arm, around the other’s attempted grapple, understanding their movement’s intentions better than they did. They collided with each other in the space where I had been, going down in a tangle of elbows and curses.
I heard the sheep bleating in the distance, the wind rustling through the birch leaves, the faintest echo of my own breathing. The world felt impossibly clear, as if I had stepped outside of time for just a moment.
When the dust settled, literally and figuratively, I stood unmarked in the center of the path while four older boys sat in various states of bewilderment and bruised dignity. None of them had managed to land so much as a finger on me.
I should have felt satisfied—I’d won without landing a single blow. But something felt wrong. The boys weren’t just angry anymore. Their eyes had gone wide with something closer to fear.
Peter pushed himself to his feet, spitting dirt and what might have been blood. When he looked at me, his expression held a hatred that was far deeper than mere embarrassment warranted.
“Witchcraft,” he said, the word separating us like a blade. “Dancing around like some... some dark-touched freak.”
The others nodded, finding solidarity in this explanation that preserved their dignity while explaining their failure. They began to back away, but Marcus’ parting words carried the weight of a promise:
“This isn’t over, dancing boy. Our family has connections: we know Lightbringers. Come Harvest Festival, when all the lords and ladies are watching... we’ll see how your pretty moves serve you then.”
Lightbringers: the Emperor’s silent hunters who moved like whispers through the realm, seeking out heresy and old magic with the relentless patience of wolves tracking wounded prey. They answered to no lord, acknowledged no law save the Emperor’s will, and left behind only the absence of those who had offended the natural order. Most believed them to be legend, ghost stories told to frighten children and keep the superstitious in line.
The boys dusted themselves off and began walking back to town, conspiring in low voices. Occasionally turning to look back at me, their words carrying fresh venom even at this distance. Alone among the birches’ growing shadows, I had the uncomfortable realization that I may have won this encounter but was less safe than before.
I lay awake that night, the wind worrying at the shutters. Marcus Ashford’s eyes. Peter’s voice saying “witchcraft” like he’d found the answer to some riddle. And that parting threat, spoken with the confidence of someone who believed he had weapons I couldn’t dance around.
And I found myself wondering, for the first time, whether the Truth might be dangerous to know.
The Harvest Festival transformed our estate into something magical, a place I barely recognized despite having known every stone and timber since birth. Pavilions bloomed across the moors like exotic flowers, their bright banners snapping in the autumn wind. The great courtyard had been converted into a merchant’s paradise: stalls selling everything from honey cakes to carved bone trinkets, from leather goods worked soft as silk to steel so fine it sang when you tapped it with your fingernail.
I discovered the overturned tomato cart on my first circuit of the grounds, drawn by the sound of children’s laughter echoing off the courtyard walls. Some unlucky young merchant lost control of his produce wagon on the steep approach to our gates, spilling perfectly good tomatoes intended for our stores across the cobblestones. Rather than waste them, the kitchen staff declared them fair game for anyone willing to help clean up. I watched, grinning, as a lord’s daughter in silks lobbed fruit at a merchant’s son, both of them shrieking with delight as juice stained their festival finery beyond redemption. The memory of those children rose unbidden throughout the day, making me grin and shake my head each time I imagined my mother’s expression had she found me among them: the horror at seeing her precious Elen reduced to a sticky, juice-stained savage.
In the eastern meadow, archers sent arrows whistling toward targets so distant they looked like poppyseeds. I found myself holding my breath as Lord Carrick’s champion drew his bow, then erupting in cheers with the crowd when his arrow split one already buried in the center ring. Near the stable yard, I lingered to watch men who looked strong enough to pull down trees compete to see who could throw hammers the farthest, their grunts of effort punctuating the morning air like some primal music.
But it was the magicians who truly captured my imagination. They set up near the merchant stalls, close enough to draw crowds but far enough from the serious competitions to avoid interfering with the lords’ amusements. I spent the better part of that first afternoon watching a lean man with clever fingers make coins vanish and reappear, pull ribbons from empty air, cause wooden cups to dance without touching them.
“The secret,” he winked at me during a brief pause between performances, “is knowing that everything you see is true, but you’re not seeing everything.” I don’t know if I believed him.
The second day brought horse races that thundered across the moors like living storms. I climbed to the highest tower just to watch the riders disappear into the distance, then reappear as dots on the horizon, growing larger until I could make out individual horses and the colors their riders wore. Sir Ashford’s stallion took the long course, while Lady Tydsdale’s mare proved unbeatable in the short sprints around the lower meadow.
But underneath all the pageantry and celebration, I could feel something building. Whinn arrived that morning, her modest carriage looking almost apologetic among the grand coaches of the visiting nobility. I watched her move through the crowds with purposeful steps, speaking briefly with various guests, her fingers tracing subtle gestures that I was only beginning to recognize as the handspeak of the True.
She would look toward me, point discretely in my direction with one finger, then two, sometimes three. I understood: she was identifying me to others, building an audience for tomorrow’s performance. But there was something in her manner that suggested more than simple preparation. She moved like someone gathering intelligence, cataloguing faces, measuring responses.
When she finally found me near the archery ranges, her usual warm demeanor was replaced by something more serious.
“Tomorrow, my dear boy,” she said without preamble, “you must dance not for me, not for your mother, not even for yourself, but for Truth. Do you understand?”
I nodded, though I wasn’t sure I did.
“Trust your body. Trust your training. Trust the Truth.” She studied my face with those keen eyes that seemed to see more than they should. She looked like she wanted to say more, but instead she reached out her hand as if to place it on my shoulder, then remembered contact was forbidden and withdrew it quickly.
“I will,” I said, though my doubts cracked my voice.
The third day dawned grey and misty. The morning competitions proceeded as planned: swordplay in the marked pasture, contests of strength near the stables, but everything felt charged with anticipation for me.
I spent most of the day in nervous preparation, running through sequences in my mind, testing my balance and flexibility in the privacy of my chambers. My mother appeared periodically with encouragements and small adjustments to my costume: a simple tunic and breeches of soft white linen that would move with me rather than constrain.
As the afternoon shadows began to lengthen, servants cleared out the merchant stalls and erected a proper stage in the great courtyard, its wooden platform raised high enough that even those in the back could see clearly. Torches were positioned around the perimeter, their flames dancing in the light breeze.
By dusk, what seemed like half the Northern Provinces had gathered in our courtyard. Lords and ladies occupied the chairs of honor closest to the stage, while their retainers and the common folk filled in behind them in a great semicircle of expectant faces. The merchant stalls all closed up for the evening, and even the kitchen staff were given leave to watch.
The herald stepped forward, his voice carrying clearly across the assembled crowd:
“Lords and ladies, honored guests, people of the Northern Provinces! Our gracious hostess, Lady deArthis, would speak!”
My mother appeared at the edge of the stage, elegant in her finest gown, every inch the noble lady as she acknowledged the crowd’s respectful applause. When she spoke, her voice, softer than the herald’s, carried a note of pride that made my chest tight with nervous excitement.
“Friends and neighbors, guests,” she began, “for three days we have celebrated the season’s bounty together. We have witnessed feats of skill and strength, enjoyed the fruits of craft and artistry. Tonight, we offer you a parting gift from the old traditions: a Truth Dance such as graces the Emperor’s own Harvest Festival.”
A murmur ran through the crowd: surprise, anticipation, perhaps a few whispers of skepticism. Most had never seen a Truth Dance.
“I present my son: Elenden deArthis, Truth Dancer!”
The applause was polite but uncertain. I could see faces in the crowd, some familiar, some strange. Near the back, I think I caught a glimpse of Marcus Ashford and his companions, their expressions unreadable in the torchlight.
Then I was walking toward the stage, my feet carrying me forward while my mind seemed to float somewhere behind my body. The wooden platform felt solid beneath my feet as I took my position at center stage, acknowledging the crowd with a bow that Whinn drilled into me until it was second nature.
The low pipes began alone, their somber voice casting a hush over the crowd. A single melody, slow and spare, filling the space with something heavy, almost mournful.
Then the strings slipped in beneath, subtle at first—threads of harmony weaving through the air. This was nothing like Whinn’s gentle humming and clapping, the simple rhythms I grew used to. This was music with weight, thick with feeling, filling the air like mist.
I stood frozen for one heartbeat, then another, the crowd’s attention pressing down on me, silent and expectant. My mind raced through sequences, through forms, but it all felt suddenly foreign, disconnected from this moment, this music, this stage.
The drum spoke. A single beat, then another, steady and deep. In that rhythm, I heard Whinn’s voice clear as if she stood beside me: “Begin at the beginning, my dear boy.”
The drummer found his rhythm, or it found me, and I could breathe again. That was the pulse of blood in veins, that was the rhythm of feet on earth and breath in lungs. I closed my eyes, let the music wash over me like rain on thirsty ground, and began.
Earth Awakening.
The sequence flowed from my body without conscious thought, muscles remembering what my mind had forgotten in its nervousness. I felt the platform beneath my feet, solid and sure, and let that stability flow up through my legs into my spine. Around me, the music swelled and dipped like rolling hills, pipes singing high and sweet while the strings provided deep undertones that seemed to rise from the earth itself.
Fire Seeking Sky.
My arms swept upward, fingers tracing patterns that spoke of growth, of reaching, of the inexorable pull between earth and heaven. I felt the crowd’s attention shifting, uncertainty giving way to something closer to wonder. I was the flame reaching toward the stars.
Water Finding Course.
I let my body become liquid, flowing from one position to the next with the inevitability of streams seeking the sea. Every movement melted into the next, and I felt that familiar transformation: I was no longer Elenden dancing, but water given flesh.
Wind Through All.
The music rose to meet me as I spun and leaped, my white tunic billowing and snapping like a banner caught in a gale, fabric streaming behind me like captured wind made visible.
That’s when I felt it.
Beyond the music, beyond the crowd, there was something else. A wrongness. A discord that had nothing to do with the musicians and everything to do with malice given form. My body continued dancing, it had passed beyond conscious control, but my awareness sharpened with the sudden clarity of prey sensing a predator.
I felt rather than saw: in the crowd’s middle section. Hands reaching for things that weren’t applause. Objects being hefted. The first tomato, sailing out of the crowd in a lazy arc that would have struck me squarely in the chest if I hadn’t been moving.
River Around Stone.
I flowed aside without missing a beat, letting the ripe fruit splatter harmlessly against the platform behind me. The crowd gasped, some thinking it was part of the performance, others beginning to suspect that something was amiss. But I kept dancing, kept listening, kept moving.
More projectiles followed: tomatoes from that overturned cart, no doubt, saved for this purpose. But they were thrown by boys who didn’t understand the first thing about reading movement, about anticipating where a target would be rather than where it was. I danced between them like wind through wheat, each near-miss only adding to the strange beauty of the moment.
I felt delighted, confident, but then felt, I can’t describe how... something wrong: someone delighting at my overconfidence.
At the crowd’s edge, beyond the torchlight’s reach, a figure in black leather stood with the stillness of a professional. No boy with petty grievances, no merchant’s son throwing fruit in adolescent spite. This was a killer, and he held a bow.
The first arrow came while I was completing Fire Leaping To Tree, its sharp whistle a deadly counterpoint to the pipes’ melody. I saw it coming before it left the bow, and threw myself into Water Over Fall, diving beneath its flight path like liquid. The crowd erupted in amazed applause, still thinking this was choreographed, still believing that arrows fired at their host’s son were part of some elaborate imperial-style performance.
The second arrow followed before I had fully completed my roll. This one would have taken me through the throat if I hadn’t been flowing already into Mist Rising, my body lifting and turning in a spiral that carried me up and away from the shaft’s intended path. The arrowhead passed so close I felt its wind against my cheek.
The music faltered as the musicians began to understand that something was very wrong indeed. But the rhythm held, those deep drums still beating like a heart, like the pulse of earth itself, and I held to that rhythm like a drowning man holds to rope.
The third arrow was different. The archer had been watching, learning, adjusting his aim to account for my patterns. This one was fired not where I was, not even where I was going, but where I would have to be if I completed the sequence.
“PEACE.“
Not sound, but pure meaning that bypassed my ears entirely. A voice that was absolute authority wrapped in absolute love, carrying a timbre my bones recognized before my mind could name it. A voice that was always there, waiting for me to listen.
For one impossible moment, I stood motionless at the heart of chaos while death whistled past my ear.
My mother’s voice cut through the night like a blade:
“TREACHERY! GUARDS! PROTECT MY SON!”
The spell broke. The crowd’s confusion turned to panic as they realized the arrows were real, the danger immediate. Guards poured into the courtyard from their positions around the perimeter, but the archer already melted into the night.
Chaos bloomed across the courtyard like wildfire: nobles shouting orders, servants fleeing in terror, guards searching frantically for an enemy who vanished as thoroughly as if he never existed. In the midst of it all, I stood on the platform, my heart desperately trying to remember the sound of that voice, the love it held. My eyes closed to the chaos, my white tunic unmarked, my breathing steady despite the adrenaline singing in my veins. Peace.
When I opened my eyes and looked out over the churning mass of confusion and fear, I saw them: scattered through the crowd like stars in a dark sky, perhaps ten or eleven people standing perfectly still while chaos raged around them. Each had right hands raised—palms perpendicular to the ground, all five fingers extended—pointing directly at me with the ancient gesture of deep recognition. Whinn stood among them, tears streaming down her face, her expression radiant with something between joy and sorrow.
Truth had saved my life... “evasion,” from a certain perspective...