There could be no sleep before a battle. Rehny knew this from experience. Every day he'd battled beside Vayin Vigon had had a prior sleepless night. One where he would reflect on everything that made him who he was, that made him different from what he'd thought he'd be. His thoughts had been clouded with despair and every time he'd closed his eyes and sought sleep the cloud would envelop his face and cram his nostrils and mouth. His own thoughts suffocated him and drawing breath became as hard as sleeping.
"Where do you think Ishar sleeps? I've looked for him all over camp but to no avail." Edda whispered. The moon's luminous glow pierced the darkness of the tent that had been allocated to them. They slept upon spread blankets, his closer to the center and Edda's bordered the tent's fabric. Rehny knew she feared him, or rather was suspicious of him. She hadn't slept in the tent the first night at camp and every opportunity she got had her scampering away from him. Rehny couldn't blame her, he was after all Binorian, he couldn't possibly fault her for expecting to have her throat slit without notice.
"Do you want me to face that sack of straw you've fashioned upon your blankets or do you want me to face where you really are?" Rehny asked while facing the tent's ceiling. Edda hissed and after the sound of light footed steps he turned his head to the blanket where she sat beside her decoy.
"It isn't straw, it's a blanket within a blanket."
"Mmh," Rehny replied. "The Remu have a tendency to employ forms of Sleight. Trying to make things seem as they aren't. It's always a game within a game with your people and that's how we always end up winning. By taking to mind that everything regarding the Remu isn't as it seems."
Edda scoffed then spoke in a normal pitch. "Your wording, it is as if you're still Binorian." "But I am."
"What is the mission Vayin sent you on? Let me guess, to slice Ishar's throat as he sleeps? Is that what they are waiting for at the North Local? To see you walking in with Ishar's head in hand? You might have fooled the King but the Remu are not as gullible as the Talisi." So that's why you wanted to know whether I knew where Ishar slept. Her voice held no emotion behind the words. She posed questions that didn't serve the purpose of getting answered but to measure his reactions to them. He was certain Edda was monitoring his breath. Heck! He'd heard rumors that the Remu could hear a heart's beat from across a room. Rehny wondered if he should ask her if the rumor was true.
"Are you left or right handed?" Rehny asked.
"What?"
"I know you have a blade on you and I'm trying to measure which direction the plunge would come from." Rehny said and followed through with a chuckle. "It's funny. When I came here I expected to die by the hand of a Talisi not a Remu."
A quick shuffle and a blade's tip pressed to the side of his neck. Right above a vein. Not much pressure was needed for the metal to draw blood. His hands rested upon his chest, his fingers interlocked. Any reaction from him spelt certain death yet the urge to jerk his hands up for no other reason other than to send things into motion overwhelmed him. Within whatever lay beneath thought was a feeling that called to him, urging him to leap into an abyss by the mere effort of a limb's movement. The urge to whistle coincided with the feeling.
"What mission did Vayin send you on?" Edda asked. The question required an answer for the press of the blade heightened by a fraction.
"Do it."
Silence.
"Plunge it in."
Only Edda's breath could be heard.
"Please." Rehny heard the strain in his voice.
The blade's tip left his neck and he let out a breath he didn't know he was holding. He heard Edda settle back on her blanket and the heavy release of her breath. A cold breeze wafted through the tent's partially opened flap and brushed upon Rehny's face with a chilly kiss that he did not react to.
"Vayin didn't send me on any mission."
"Then why are you here?"
Rehny pondered that question. Why am I here? By consulting the point of logic Rehny surmised that there were two parts to the question. The first served the purpose of quenching Edda's doubt regarding him and the second aimed at answering an internal conundrum he'd personally taken upon himself to ignore. Rehny sighed. "I don't know."
"You don't know?" Her tone was mocking.
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Rehny fully turned to face Edda's silhouette. "I wanted it to end, Edda. I wanted this constant state of bearing witness to end. I bore witness to joy, to love while in my younger years. I bore witness to pain, loss, grief and hate in my later years. Then I wondered what else was left for me to witness since I'd already been at the two furthest ends of the spectrum. Turns out there was nothing else left to witness but a cold numbness or one might say indifference that attached itself to me as a Yendw wolf pup to its mother's tit. It was endless.
"I wanted it to end, Edda. Then at the Nula Anyl I’d seen the boy's eyes glow the same hue as a Yendw wolf's. There was a ferocity to him, deeper than I'd ever seen in anyone upon the battlefield. An animosity that spoke of the unthinkable, something beyond what the mind could fathom for it held no order to its working as perception does. I bore witness to that, Edda, and I felt the excitement that came with something new-"
"So you chased that newness here, to witness it." There was no skepticism to her words. It was as if she understood.
"I don't know. Witnessing seems like the right word but it doesn't cover the full reason behind my actions. I feel like I've come to do more than witness, you see? To partake in whatever it is that's going to happen. To be a part of it and to experience whatever feeling it brings for everything about it is new." Rehny was surprised with how easy it was for words to spew out of him. He shook his head from side to side. "Still, I don't know. It might be less or it might be more."
"So this isn’t about killing Vayin Vigon for you-"
"It is, sort of. It is said that killing one with the Jojoh Meena is impossible so the hope of doing so eludes
everyone. But Ishar is the embodiment of the impossible, and that," He smiled, "that changes everything." Rehny leaned back onto the blanket and fixed his eyes on the dark tent's ceiling. A long silence ensued that was interrupted by Edda's movement as she lay flat on the blanket and assumed Rehny's pose.
"You're as weird as him." Edda said.
Rehny grunted his assent. There were a few hours till dawn, enough time for him to withdraw into himself and toy with emotions of old for it would be impossible to experience sleep's embrace one last time before his end come the morrow. He closed his eyes and instead of delving into the past he found himself chained to the present. He focused on Edda's breathing and the restless footsteps of soldiers moving about outside the tent, soldiers suffering the same predicament as him for they all stared at death's gate. He did not know when the impossible became possible and the present got blunted under the sweet embrace of sleep.
Shouts had him jolting out of the blanket with Edda springing up beside him. He could see the silver gleam of her blade from the moon's glow as he peered about the tent. He did not know how many hours had passed as he slept but dawn was still distant.
Rehny bolted for the tent's flap with Edda at his wake. He plunged clear of the tent's fabric and grabbed the first soldier running past by the shoulders. "What is it? What's going on?" He asked.
"The Kolotian!" The soldier replied, a tremble to his voice. "He is heading for the Binorian camp!"
XXXXXXXXXXX
The critters of the night made their sounds that could be translated as either mating calls or a call for kin. The sounds punctuated the silence of the night and offered Leba Vigon much needed shelter from the silence within the crowded cave. He did not know whether it was discipline that drove the servants, now dressed in towering black gowns same as him, to keep their mouths so tightly shut or whether it was the same excitement, curiosity and fear that tore at his insides.
Ten poles fashioned with burning torches at their ends and spread ten paces apart offered the only lighting beside the full moon. The deep chasm at the end of the cave that had drunk its fill of the blood of thousands of children held a darkness that contested the torchlights, a darkness so palpable that shivers crawled upon Leba's spine whenever he glanced at it.
He stood at the mouth of the cave, hands clasped behind his back and face turned to the luminous orb upon the sky. He wondered of the significance a full moon held for the ritual and decided to voice the question to the old Kolotian standing beside him dressed in a similar black.
"Why the full moon?"
"Hmm?"
"Why is the full moon necessary for the ritual?" Leba asked. He could hear the Kolotian shuffle about with numerous beads on his person, draped over his shoulders, in the nook of his arms and sticking out of folds within his robe. The Kolotian seemed to be trying to read all the beads at the same time and everyone at the cave awaited him to be done so as to begin.
"Yes, the words are complete yes. Have you thought of your gift to the God? I hope you have. Yes, mmh.. So many things have to be just right. The knowledge was hard to decipher but decipher is what I've done." The Kolotian rumbled on. There was a nervousness to him, a lack of calm Leba hadn't seen in him before. The Prince wondered whether the old man was as capable as he made himself out to be. "Oh, the moon?" The old man suddenly said as if he'd only just heard Leba's question. His head jerked upright and peered into the night sky. His violet eyes within the folds of his face disconcerted Leba as their hue reminded him of the young Kolotian from the Nula Anyl. "Yes, it is well known that madness is at its peak during the full moon." The old man said in a raspy voice.
"Madness?" Leba asked.
"Disorder of the mind. Those who suffer madness tend to exhibit the trait more under the full moon. Also animals are more violent during the full moon, you can see it with Yendw wolves. The full moon awakens something bestial in them and sends them into a frenzy. Disorder of the spirit." "Aaah. So disorder is important for the summoning." Leba concluded.
"Locha is beyond order, beyond disorder. But the full moon creates unbalance on all levels, it is my hope that said unbalance is mirrored in all aspects of the bringer's prisons. Thus enabling us to free him." "An assumption then." Leba replied while looking down at the Kolotian.
"You might call it that." The old man said with a shrug before returning to the beads.
Leba let out an audible sigh and turned his attention back to the full moon. The dependence on assumptions unnerved him but he barred his emotions, saving them for when the Kolotian would fail him and the chasm would drink more blood.