Chapter Text
Medric is 4 years old, and he doesn’t understand.
He lives with his mother, and the waves on the shore sing him to sleep every night. Their home is small, stone-built, but warm and - friendly, is how Medric thinks of it. Later, in another cottage, he will feel that sense of safety and comfort with a start of recognition, but now it is just home.
His mother sings as she works in the kitchen or in their garden. Sometimes Medric helps gather the vegetables, especially the peas that smell so good and fresh, but sometimes he goes down to the sand with a gang of other children. The others splash and shriek in the waves, but Medric is more often distracted by looking for the prettiest shells - pearl, alabaster, a delicate oyster blue…
He brings them home to his mother, for her to exclaim over and reward him with jam tarts and a comfortable cuddle on the window seat. He wishes he could show her the shells when they are at their most sparkling on the shore. By the time he gets home, they are dry and a little duller.
They are happy, his mother and him, or so he believes - but then his father comes to visit, and it’s like the difference between dry shells and those still sparkling at the water’s edge. His mother has plenty of smiles and kind words for him and for their neighbours, but he never sees her face light up like that, except when his father is home.
“Marta!” his father always calls, as he steps in the door, dropping his bag and opening his arms.
“Terin!” His mother does not even pause to dry her hands - they had been washing the dishes, Medric very seriously drying the glasses. She flies across the kitchen, running as free as the young girls Medric sees at the beach, and throws herself into his father’s embrace. He thinks that is the only time he is not first in his mother’s heart, when she sees his father again, and feels a little forgotten - but then she remembers, and turns, holding out her hand to him.
“See, Terin - here is your boy.” His mother draws him forward, speaking slowly and carefully.
“Ah, but this cannot be Medric! How much you have grown, my little soldier!”
His father does not speak slowly, and he does not sound like anyone else in the village. Medric has not spoken like his father since his last visit, months ago, but now the words come quickly to his tongue. “I have, Papa! I am as tall as Jerad now, and I can run nearly as fast!”
“Ah, so! What an officer you will make, when your legs are a little longer.” His father grins and crouches down to ruffle his hair. He looks up at Medric’s mother, and this time he does speak more slowly. “The boy looks well, Marta. It is good.” They smile at each other, then his father lifts Medric up and they all share an embrace.
His father coming is like a strong wind blowing all through the house - like the winds they get when spring is coming, Medric thinks. He is dimly aware that, in most houses, parents live together all the time, and that most parents talk more to each other than they do to their children. In his house, his mother and his father talk more to him than to each other - because, of course, he can understand them both. He does not think of this as a particular accomplishment, because he has always been able to do so.
His father tells him stories of a faraway land - Sainna, it is called, and the language he speaks with his father is called Sainnese. Sainna sounds so beautiful that Medric thinks for a while that his mother is talking about there when she swears “By the land!”, but she gently explains that she means Shaftal, this land, where they live. Medric puzzles over that - is he from Sainna, then, like his father, or from Shaftal, like his mother? When he asks her, it is the only time he sees his mother look sad.
Medric often dreams of faraway places, so he is not surprised when he dreams of Sainna. The rolling golden hillsides and blooming flowers are just as his father described - so different from the rocky, unforgiving hills that rise up behind his mother’s village. The sun shines and the breeze is warm - but he had not expected there to be so many walls. Or so many people carrying pistols and dressed in grey - like his father.
Medric does not understand why his father doesn’t stay with his mother, or why they don’t talk to each other more. He never doubts that they love each other, though.
Medric is 9 years old and he lives in a garrison now.
He tries not to think about the cottage in the village by the sea. He tries especially hard not to think about his mother, because that will make him cry and crying is discouraged here. He is going to be a soldier, and soldiers do not cry, his father has told him. He very much wants to make his father proud, but it’s hard, because Medric is not very good at some parts of being a soldier.
He makes a promising start, because he can strip, clean, reassemble and load a pistol more quickly than any of the other children. He does not understand why they cannot - all the little pieces fit together so satisfyingly under his fingers. It’s just obvious when they’re not right. The sergeant in charge, seeing him finish first every time, challenges him to do it blindfolded. “Never know when you might be in a night attack, lad.”
He has to practise a few times, but soon he is just as fast with his eyes shut as with them open. The sergeant is openly sceptical, then just as openly admiring. The other children are jealous. His father is delighted - “I told you the boy had clever hands! Just wait until he learns to shoot!”
The sergeant smiles tolerantly, “Maybe he will be as good a marksman as his father, Terin.”
His father drops an arm round Medric’s shoulders proudly, “Of course he will.” Medric glows. Soldiers do not embrace each other like Shaftali villagers do. He misses hugs.
Whatever Medric has inherited from his father, it is not marksmanship. The pistol is still just as familiar in his hand, but he cannot hit a target - not unless it’s so close the enemy would have already killed him, as the sergeant says sourly. There has been some shouting, because everyone was initially convinced that he was not trying. His father’s surprise and confusion is far worse than any amount of shouting from the sergeant, though.
His father tries again, later, and then goes into the nearby town and returns triumphantly with a strange metal and glass object. “Spectacles,” he calls them, and the world does look a bit sharper when Medric puts them on - but he still can’t hit the target more than once in every five attempts. When he glances up, he wishes he could not see his father’s look of disappointment quite so clearly.
The spectacles come in useful later. Medric may not be able to shoot, but he has no trouble at all with reading and figuring. His mother had already taught him to read in Shaftali, and Sainnese is no harder - just different. His father praises him for getting all the supply problems the sergeant has set correct, “You will make a fine quartermaster some day, son!” He realises that his father has stopped telling him that he will make a fine officer.
Medric still dreams most nights. He does not dream of faraway places now - instead he dreams of books. Books hidden in dark places, books forgotten - once, horrifyingly, books with pages torn out and used as firelighters. (He woke his dormitory with his screaming that night. He could not explain to them why.) The books are calling to him that they are waiting, that he should come and find them - and he wonders why when he wakes. He supposes it’s just that he misses reading. There are no books in the garrison.
Once, he has a very special dream. He dreams of a cave with walls made of books, lit by lamplight. He knows it is cold there, but somehow he is warm. He is waiting for someone, and he feels the same lift of his heart that he used to feel when he woke and realised that both his mother and father were home, in the cottage by the sea. He wakes smiling.
Medric is 14 years old, and he realises he was never meant to be a soldier after all.
His dreams are not merely dreams - they are true visions. His life has meaning and a purpose. He may not lead, but he can direct. His fellows look at him with respect now, even if not with liking. His father would be proud… He thinks of his father with a pang, not only of loss, but grief that he will not see his son triumph. He does not have to try to hold back tears. It has been a long time now since he cried.
He dreams of where the Shaftali Paladins are and directs his brother soldiers to them. He grows better at interpreting even his more ambiguous dreams, and soon the company need not fear an ambush, even on the most remote woodland roads. The officers show him maps and take him on patrols of the area, so that he can better identify the landmarks he sees in his sleep. They listen and take heed of what he says. He feels useful. He feels strong. He is alone.
He still dreams of the books, and now he has the power to search for them. No-one cares about the books except him. The officers think it a quirk, an affectation. The soldiers don’t care, particularly as he is prepared to pay for books that they have forgotten they have. Yet each time he finds a new book and adds it to his growing collection, it feels right. It feels like another piece of the pistol slotting into place in the dark, under his fingers. He pores over the books, reading incessantly. There is still a piece missing - but he knows he’ll find it.
They find him a tutor, a Shaftali man. Brin smiles and calls him a “smart lad” when he does well at their philosophy lessons, which reminds Medric of the men in his mother’s village when he was a little boy. He also catches Brin watching him with a calculating look in his eyes when he thinks Medric isn’t looking - which also reminds him of the Shaftali villagers. He will serve his father’s people if he cannot serve his mother’s.
His dreams grow more frightening. He dreams of barns burning, then homes, and of people fleeing through the fields. He dreams of swords held to children’s throats to make their parents talk. He dreams of pale, hard-eyed Paladins slipping through the woods, trying to intercept the soldiers before their next raid. He wakes sweating and gasping. He tells the officers. They make their own plans and, that night, Medric dreams again of flames and the sobbing breath of his mother’s people fleeing.
Brin comforts him when he wakes this time, with a hand on his back and soft words. No-one has spoken to him like that since his father died. When Brin offers him wine, telling him it will help him sleep, he takes it eagerly. It deadens his mind for a few hours - but the dreams that follow are worse.
Medric is 19 years old, and he doesn’t understand.
Brin is gone, executed for spying, and Medric does not miss him - but he is alone again. He dreams of another book, a special book - though he believes all books are special. This one belongs to a soldier in another company, and he bribes a sergeant to escort him to their garrison. The woman is astonished at the amount of money he offers for the little wooden box she had almost forgotten about. “There’s nothing valuable in it, sir. I thought there was, with the lock and all, but it’s just old paper.”
He opens the box. He looks at the silk padding, at the title page. He thinks, I know what this is. He pays the woman all the money he has brought and carries the box away to his collection. That night he dreams his old childhood dream of a cave of books, lit by lamplight. This time the wooden box he found today is resting on his knee, and he knows that it is very valuable to someone, someone important to him. That dream is peaceful, yet he wakes with the nagging feeling that something is still missing. The pistol is still missing a piece. He has missed a turn somewhere on a narrow path. Or he has not reached the right turning yet.
He dreams of Paladin ambushes, of farmers secretly ferrying supplies to the fighters, of where the soldiers should be positioned for maximum effect. He tells the officers - and that night his dreams are full of screaming, again. He wakes, shaking. This can’t be right. Can it? He cannot bear the thought that it is not. Who will I serve, if not my father’s people? He reaches for a glass and a bottle of spirits. It’s easier that way.
More days pass, and more nights. Medric dreams, and drinks to dull the dreaming when it gets too much. One night he dreams of a beautiful valley, surrounded by mountains, beneath a starry sky. It seems familiar - maybe he dreamed of this place as a child - then he hears shouts and the drum of warhorse hooves.
He sees the last stand of the tribe’s warriors. He sees the cavalry ride over them with barely a pause. He sees a village burned to the ground with the children and elders still inside. He sees the massacre of an entire people. He desperately wants to wake up, but he cannot, he must watch the flames destroy everything. Or not everything - something moves amongst the flames and an owl with smoking feathers flies straight at him, talons outstretched for his eyes. In his dream, he screams - and then he is awake, clutching at the sheets of his own bed. His face is wet with tears, as it has not been since he was a child, since his mother died. I know this is not right.
He stumbles out of bed, goes to the table and picks up a glass - then he pauses. He stares at the spirit bottle. What else am I doing wrong? He sits down, and stares at the bottle until the sun rises and it is time to get up.
The next night, he dreams of where to find another book. It’s in a nearby garrison, one he has visited before. He thought he’d retrieved all the books from there, but he dreams of opening a small chest, rummaging beneath some blankets, and lifting out a book. He cannot read the title, but in his dream he hears his mother’s voice: “My son, this is for you.”
He demands that an escort accompany him to get the book the very next morning. It is exactly where he dreamt it - and the title is The Way of the Seer. He feels the final piece of the pistol slot into place with a click. He spends the day reading the book, and that night he pours the bottle of spirits away before he goes to bed.
He dreams of the owl again - this time she is a bird of flame, but the flames do not burn her. He watches her fly brightly across the night to a distant hilltop, where a man waits. The owl settles on the man’s wrist and they both look up at a sky full of shooting stars. He feels a sense of kinship with them, the owl and the man, but he cannot say why… The vision seems to slip through his fingers, but he dreams again that night - an altogether quieter, more commonplace dream.
He dreams that he is sitting in a stone cottage before a warm fire, and thinks at first that he is back in his mother’s house, where love and loyalty were simple. Then he realises that it is sleet, not rain, drumming on the window, and that the land falls away into open space outside, not to the sea. He is not in his old home, but still he feels that lift of his heart and cannot understand why he is happy. There is a pen and paper in his lap, but he does not read the words. He hears his own voice raised in a question - and then he hears another voice answer, kindly, and he knows that one day he will not be alone any more.
When he wakes, he knows he has reached the right turning - and he knows what path he must take.