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Essek is born nine months after a decorated scholar of den Thelyss dies in his sleep. This is not a coincidence. His biological parents, while consecuted, are not high in the hierarchy of the den. Their child will be a gift to the umavi.
A hundred and twenty years later, and Essek barely remembers their names.
From the start, he is raised by specially selected tutors and observed closely by the umavi. The odds are not particularly strong that this particular child houses the soul of the departed scion, out of the hundred-odd children born in Rosohna in that year. But as the children grow, several things mark Essek out from the rest. He is a reserved child, but not a timid one. He is very clearly brilliant. He understands the basic concepts of dunamancy almost before they are explained to him. And he is, more and more obviously, a boy.
“You were stubborn about that in your last life, too,” the den cook says to the child perched on the edge of a barrel, staring at them with solemn eyes. The cook is quite old, bald and bent, and they are not consecuted. Essek knows what this means: one day they will not be here any more, and they will never come back. “Said one life as a woman was quite enough, and you wouldn’t be doing it again, thank you very much.”
They watch the child’s eyes widen, though he’s clearly trying to remain composed. “It’s… we can do that?”
“The priests say it’s better to embrace new experiences in each life,” the cook says, “but if you feel strongly about it, no one will dare insult a Thelyss by referring to him in a way he does not wish.”
The umavi seems pleased about it, when he tells her. “It’s expected for you to feel that kind of discomfort right now, De- Essek,” she says, a smile on her beautifully painted face. “Many of us do, when we’re children. After your amanuensis, as your experiences integrate, you will feel better, I promise. Try and focus on your studies, for now. You are doing very well.”
“Thank you, umavi,” he says.
There are no other children in the den. He sees children on the streets, sometimes, when his tutors take him to shops in the mercantile quarter of the city. The way they play with each other looks rough and violent to him. He can barely understand what they shout at each other. He feels no desire to play with them.
(“I didn’t know any other children either!” Jester shouts at him, eleven decades later. She frowns after a moment. “But I always had the Traveller, so it wasn’t so bad. Oh, Essek, you must have been so lonely!”
He supposes he must have been.)
Essek goes to bed on the eve of his fifteenth birthday with an entirely undeserved feeling of excitement. He knows perfectly well that “around fifteen to sixteen” is only an average. A child in another prominent den reached amanuensis at only fourteen, just a month previously. Essek had attended the ceremony, along with his mother the umavi and several other relatives. The girl had been shining with joy as she formally greeted her past life friends and family.
Essek thinks it will happen to him soon. He has been having many strange dreams and unfamiliar feelings.
He tries not to feel too disappointed when he wakes and remembers nothing he did not remember the night before.
"Don't worry too much about it," the umavi's partner tells him. He should think of this man as 'Father', he knows, and he does, he tries to, but it is hard, when the man is so dull and uninteresting compared to his wife, or even the other elders. "It will happen when it's supposed to happen. You should enjoy being a child. It's not a very long part of our lives." His hand pats Essek's shoulder, and Essek moves away.
Essek hates being a child.
The umavi begins to tutor him personally, lavishing praise on his successes. She gives him scrolls to read, spells written in a hand that he likes to imagine resembles his, crabbed and spidery with age.
He tries to kiss the den librarian, a fresh faced man who was born only five years before Essek and yet is twenty times his age. He receives a laugh and a “Maybe after your amanuensis, old man.”
Then a swineherd’s son from the outskirts of Rosohna knocks on the great iron doors of the den and says he is Desran Thelyss.
Essek avoids him. Everyone avoids Essek, for six months. They probably don’t mean it to be that long. Some older Kryn have difficulty keeping track of time, the cook tells him.
He turns sixteen.
“Perhaps you are someone else, then,” the umavi tells him. “It will be a pity, if we lose you to another den.” There is a subtext, there. Their private tutoring sessions are cancelled. He finds his access to library texts suddenly restricted.
He experiments on his own, as best he can.
He turns seventeen.
“Well,” the umavi says, on his eighteenth birthday. “This is nothing to be ashamed of. It is simply all the more impressive, that you have been able to come so far with only the memories and experiences of one life. You are quite the prodigy, and an asset to den Thelyss.”
“My mother does me honor,” he says, and his fingers twist in a practiced flourish, and he rises into the air, floating just a few inches above the ground, just high enough that he is taller than her.
She congratulates him on his skill, and ignores his pettiness. “I expect a perfect description of this spell for the archives.”
“Of course,” he says, with a bow. “Does this mean I am allowed access to the archives once more?”
“Naturally,” she says. “You are a member of this den. With all the privileges- and responsibilities- attendant upon that. I will expect results from your research.”
“As my mother wishes.”
(He wants the spell of transformation. Wants it so badly he can taste copper in his mouth. For the sake of the knowledge itself, yes, the brilliant twists and turns born of three minds working in a kind of union he has not before experienced, but also for the silenced part of himself that keeps thinking of Beauregard and Fjord in the hot tub, soaking up to their waists, shirts open, apparently unselfconscious. How pleasant that might be.
Looks at Caleb, broad arms dirty with clay, at the fine red hair on his arms, on the sliver of chest visible through his slightly unbuttoned shirt.
He has arguments lined up in his mind- favors he could hint at- even veiled threats, if necessary. But Caleb’s face transforms into something open and guileless when he says, “Of course,” a clay-streaked hand rising to hover over his heart. There is something like the hint of a smile on his face when he says he could not have created the spell without Essek and Essek wants, he wants things he has never wanted before, more strongly than he has ever wanted anything before, more strongly than he ever wanted his mother’s affection, but the feeling is too much and he has told too many lies, and all he can do is let his friends go.)