"Thrust!"

Garanth jabbed his training pole into a leather bag hanging by a rope from a heavy timber framework. The surprisingly heavy bag only swung back a few inches.

"No!" Torkin stepped up and repositioned the pole. "Tuck it under your arm and hold it tight like you were hugging your madra."

"I've never hugged a madra," Garanth said.

Torkin didn't blink. "Spread your legs wider." He kicked Garanth's lead foot forward. "Bend your knees. Keep your back straight, like you're taking a dump."

Garanth started to snicker, but Torkin leaned in close and yelled.

"You think this is funny? Do you think dying is a joke? Do you want to get yourself and the men around you killed? Huh?"

Garanth was startled, but not surprised at Torkin's transformation. He had followed Karux on his inspections of the trainers and training grounds. Only now did he realize that all the yelling was not because the trainees were stupid or the trainers exceptionally irritable, but that it was simply how the trainers trained. He just had to play along. "No!"

"You say dra when you speak to me! You treat me with respect because I'm the only thing standing between you and your ignorance—ignorance that will get you and your fellow reavers killed! Do you understand me?"

"Yes!" At least it wasn't much worse than being raised by Karux, he thought. In his case it really was just irritability.

"Yes, what? Say it!"

"Yes, Dra!"

"Louder, like you mean it!"

"Yes, Dra!"

"Now, thrust again and try and put that pole through the bag."

Garanth lunged and this time the bag went much higher.

"Again! Harder!"

Once more he lunged and once more the bag flew up.

"Again! Yell this time!"

"Ha!" Garanth lunged again.

"Again!"

"Ha!" The bag bounced higher with each blow.

"No. No. No. No. No! You're still doing it all wrong." Torkin walked over and grabbed the end of his pole. "Get back in position. Bend those knees and plant your feet. Try not to move them." Torkin slowly pulled the pole forward until Garanth's arms were fully extended. "Don't move your feet!" he warned and kept pulling.

Garanth leaned forward as he held onto the pole, stepping forward only when he started to tip over.

"Move back," Torkin said, holding the pole. "I don't want you moving your feet until you're at this point. Don't lift your lead foot, just slide it forward." Torkin pushed the pole back to its starting position then slowly pulled the pole toward him until Garanth was forced to step forward. "Like that. Now hit the bag."

"Ha!" Garanth lunged forward and punched the bag, sending it up to the crossbar. For a moment he thought it might go over.

"Better. Again!"

Torkin made him practice all morning, only allowing him to stop once he was exhausted and breathless. As Garanth crouched over, gasping and leaning on his pole, a line of reavers ran past carrying buckets of water.

"You'll be doing that starting tomorrow," Torkin said.

Garanth couldn't catch enough breath to reply. He could only give him a question look.

"Physical conditioning. By the middle of verd, you won't even be breathing hard." He smiled. "Besides, Har-Tor's cisterns won't fill themselves."

"Yes, Dra." Garanth gasped.

"You will also be training with the other reavers in the three spears. You'll have to wait until we visit the dwerka to learn the sword weapon. In a moment, we'll go see the smiths and get your short spear. I think you'll find that weapon quite a challenge compared to the long spear and the throwing spear. Do you have any questions so far?"

"No, Dra...well, I do have one."

"What is it?"

"What is the seat of power?"

Torkin hesitated, a surprised look on his face. "Do you know of Andrae and Cynae, the first man and woman and their fall from the sacred mountain?"

"Yes, Dra."

"And how E'yom had intended to allow Andrae to rule his creation before he fell into judgment?"

"Er, yes, Dra."

"Well, the seat of power was the place from which he would have ruled. It is believed by some that to sit in the seat of power would be to assume the authority over the land itself. For this reason, when Andrae and Cynae fell from Archetor, E'yom hid the seat of power until the Simarrah should come and lead us up the Path of Return."

"And now it has been found?" Garanth asked.

Torkin nodded. "And whoever claims it will have power over the land itself."

Somewhere in the distance, an insect chirped Garanth's name.

"Ga-ranth. Ga-ranth."

"What evil might come," Garanth wondered aloud, "If someone claims it when E'yom himself saw fit to hide it?"

<====|==|====>

The day the new tireav left was warm and sunny, yet the wind from the north sometimes had a cold edge as if the mountains of the north, which had endured its repeated blows, had not yet dulled its wintry blade. Though he trained with the reavers, Garanth was not officially attached to any of the hands. As a result, when the tireav started its march northward, Garanth did not march in their formation, so he drifted over to walk with Karux, Eiraena and the three students instead. In fact he found himself stealing glances at Corha admiring her in ways he hadn't noticed before. Something about the way she moved caught his eye and kept turning his head.

Corha noticed his attention and cast a smile back. "I like your coat."

Garanth looked down at the sleeveless leather tunic. The small bronze plates covering it glinted in the sun. "It's to protect against spears." Garanth shifted his own short spear to the other shoulder. Its two long razor-edged bronze points flashed with light. His instructors disagreed as to whether they should continue to call it a short spear or a bladed staff.

"It looks hot," Netac said with a brief sideways glance. "And heavy."

"It is, a bit," Garanth conceded. "But the physical training they put you through is to strengthen your body so you don't notice such things." Garanth kept hoping Corha would say something about the increased size of his arms, shoulders and chest. Torkin and the other trainers had assured him that they would soon make a man of him.

He continued looking over at the three students, detecting something different about them. They walked with their heads up, eyes forward as if confident they knew where they were going and what they were doing. "Something's happened, hasn't it?"

Netac gave him a crooked smile. "What in the world are you talking about?"

"It's the training, isn't it?" Garanth asked. "Were you successful?"

Harkin fingered a clear stone hanging from a leather cord around his neck. "What do you think?"

"You did do it! You were able to see the schemas he talks about."

Corha laughed.

Garanth looked from stone to stone. Netac's consisted of three clear shafts joined like a chicken's foot with the middle toe missing. Harkin's stone looked like an eight-pointed star, the four center rays longer than the remaining four. Corha's stone looked like a wreath of tiny diamond shapes or little cubes turned on their corners. "But those aren't the same stones are they?"

"Yes, but changed," Corha said.

"Changed? How? Why?"

"How much did Karux tell you of how he learned to see karis?" Netac asked.

"He said that Eiraena taught him the names and that after Amantis smashed his stone, he boiled the pieces in a clay pot—hey is that what he had you do?"

"Yes," Corha said.

"Though he had us eat a shard from the stone first," Harkin said.

"Eat it? Did that help?"

Harkin shrugged. "It's hard to say. I didn't really see the karis until after staring at the steam for hours." The others nodded in agreement.

"And the symbols? Do they look like the shapes he had us memorize?"

"Yes and no," Harkin said. "Those shapes are just shadows of the real elements. It's hard to describe them. You really have to see it."

Garanth felt a sting of loss. He had spent many fruitless hours following Karux' instructions only to see the others succeed while he wasn't even allowed to try. "So you can now do it..." he gestured awkwardly with his hands, "Do the craft like he does."

"We can see the shapes and we can change them by observing them," Netac said, sounding a little evasive.

"But it's going to be a long time before we can do anything like what Karux does," Corha added. "The schemas that make up reality are amazingly complex."

<====|==|====>

Despite years of traipsing around after Karux, the students found the non-stop walking exhausting. They gradually fell behind both the marching tireavs and the train of donkeys and attendants who carried the food and supplies. After a while the entire procession had to stop, not to rest, but just to let them catch up.

"We're not going to make it to the eastern pass today," Karux complained after one of the stops.

"We should at least make it to Korion-Garanth," Garanth suggested. He had wanted to see the village he had been named after, even if no one lived there anymore, then he remembered Karux's family had died there during the angorym invasion.

Karux shot him a dark look. "We won't be stopping there," he said fiercely. "We go on until dusk and get as close to the pass as we can."

Torkin sighed. "It seems our day-and-a-half journey will take two days at this rate."

Garanth spent most of the rest of the trip with Eiraena. Jomel's widow had put a new dress on her and cleaned and braided her hair. The braids indicated she was still unmarried, despite her nineteen or twenty years of age by which most women would have birthed at least a couple of children. Though not as full figured as Corha was likely to become, she still caught the eye of the occasional passing reaver. Karux had warned Garanth that because she was simple-minded, no man would take her as wife for fear his children would be simple-minded as well, but that didn't mean some men wouldn't consider using her for other purposes.

Garanth walked beside her, making sure she didn't get lost. She tended to get easily distracted by both things one could see, like insects or shiny rocks, and by things no one could see. "What is she looking at?" he asked rhetorically the next day during a rest stop while she stared up into the sky and spun in circles.

Netac happened to be nearby. His eyes went glassy and unfocused and he said, "She's watching an unusually large and strangely complex pattern of karis go by. It was probably caused by the insects living in this field."

"What does it look like?" Garanth asked.

"Like the rippling surface of a pond, floating free, folding and unfolding and turning in on itself."

Garanth watched her spin around laughing and wished he had a piece of that mysterious stone by which Karux had initiated the others into the secrets of his craft.