Chapter 5, "The Coming War"

Act II
Chapter 5:
Theria M'Rath

Moonlight shone
Straight as the bone
That breaks beneath her skin
Sun-firelight
Beltane night
We will meet again

She whispers
As Forgottenland descends
She is calling
To the children,
“Please come”
The sad maiden
Will be one of them
Singing out gently
A song for home



The sky was wrong, though not obviously so. You wouldn’t have noticed it if you hadn’t taken the time to stare, but Susan had. It was greener than it should have been, and there were stars in the sky you could see, even with the sun shining slightly indigo at its zenith. The child spent the next twenty minutes gazing up at those stars, wishing whatever world she inhabited would stop spinning. It was a peculiar sort of interlude. As the ground beneath her swam, her senses expanded registering a thousand new sounds and colors every second.

Aside from the sky two things stood out. The grass felt weirdly soft against her skin and the trees appeared almost normal. That first impression soon proved deceptive though as she realized that the forest around her was inhabited by innumerable strange beasts. She could hear them, or at least she thought she could, as they produced the weird living noises that were the byproduct of their existence. The combinations of those sounds blended together in a way that had no earthly equivalent. This was her first impression of Theria M’Rath. It was a new and terrifying place, yet even in her fear Susan found it intoxicating.

She draped a hand through the green undergrowth on which she sat, coming up with a palm full of tiny thistles. They looked like the spires of dandelions she used to enjoy blowing into the wind. Susan inhaled deeply; the air smelled of a unknown but wonderfully fragrant plant, a cross between cinnamon and something more earthy. She blew hard on her hand, and the thistles exploded into the air, then she made a wish.

"Rise and shine, children!" Gregory bellowed, sucking in great draughts of air, and expelling them back out with shocking volume. From her position on the ground the man looked utterly transformed. His eyes seemed lighter; his hair more brown than grey. His strides were quicker, more precise, his shoulders no longer stooped by the passage of time. His stance, his demeanor, even the way he held his hands alertly to both sides, screamed that he was back in his element, and was pleased to be so. Susan decided to obey.

She got to her knees, trying not to gawk at the changeling in front of her. Eventually, her curiosity overload her prudence.

"He's home," Tony said coming up behind her. Susan turned to regard her friend. "and happy."

Susan wondered if that was all there was. In the back of her mind she couldn’t help but wonder how much Gregory's life was tied to the land in which they now dwelled.

Their provisions were scattered over a small clearing, surrounded by tall, thick-leaved trees that looked to Susan to be similar to an oak. She wondered if it was the trees that scented the air, or some other variety of indigenous plant life. The question would have to wait though. Gregory had decided that the task of reassembling their supplies took precedence. As they searched, the wind picked up a little. Susan looked for, found, and drew on the thick woolen cloak that Gregory had “found” for her. It was a dark oily-green, the same exact color as the underbrush now surrounding her.

Bending over to pick up Tony's book bag, stuffed near to overflowing with food, Susan thought she caught some movement out of the corner of her eye. At first she ignored it, but when the movement persisted she got up slowly, hoping not to alert whatever it was that it had been detected. She pulled the bag to her, grasping it against her chest with both hands and turning slowly towards were Gregory was standing. She caught his eye, and glances frightened over her shoulder. Gregory's eye's suddenly grew keen. He surveyed their surroundings without physically shifting any part of his body. Susan was impressed by his self control. It was everything she could do not to fidget.

Just then a realization struck her. Anthony was out there! Without a thought about whether she was going to give herself or Gregory away, she began looking about frantically for her companion. The old man’s face had just enough time to turn a lovely shade of violet, when Tony came shooting out of the woods and tripped over a pile of the supplies they’d been gathering. The boy fell with an audible groan, recovered, and sprang to his feet gaping and pointing into the woods.

"We know," Susan croaked, violently aware that whatever was out there, now understood it had been detected.

Gregory expression had calmed. He looked down neutrally at his right palm and began whispering something under his breath. This lasted only a few seconds before the big man grew silent. Then louder he said clearly, “Bow.”

One of the bundles Tony had been carrying sprang out of his hands, causing the remainder to scatter at the ground by at the boy’s feet. It stopped three inches from Greg's palm, twisted 180 degrees, and extricated itself from the cloth covering that had surrounded it. When it had finished this, the string of an elegant wooden long bow was gently brushing Gregory's fingers, and the man had undergone yet another strange transformation.

We’re in trouble, Susan thought, fighting back the urge to go running blindly into the woods. She also realized that she had Gregory's bundle of arrow's in her hand. The girl tried fumblingly to produce the quiver but the old man stopped her.

"Not yet," he said. "I think seeing the bow will be enough."

Enough for what? She thought, but did not say.

"Just in case he's wrong though," Tony said. "Why don't you try and keep those handy okay.”

A burst of chirping language erupted from behind a tree nearly 30 feet away from them. Susan, and Tony jumped at the noise. Gregory for some reason looked relieved.

"Kort!” he cried to the forest in general, “You out there you old bastard! I taught you to speak properly years ago, stop tweeting at me like a goddamn Moorlingul."

As he spoke a diminutive figure emerged from behind a tree near to, but not quite in the direction from which the original voice had come. The figure stayed just inside the shadows.

"It would be worth speaking in your language of disorganized grunts," the shape said, in almost perfect English, "to prevent you from butchering my own tongue."

The figure approached then. As it did, Susan was shocked to realize that it was smaller than she’d first guessed. The creature with whom Gregory spoke, would only just come up to her waist. It wore a long sleeve-less cloak, the same color as her own, but it's seemed to be made out of some kind of animal skin. The face was angular, with long pointed ears swept back close to the skull and a straight sharp nose, both of which were covered with a fine brown fur that grew thicker and more coarse as it spread from the face, forming thick knots on the creatures arms and legs. As it finally came fully into the light the creature regarded her with a cool sort of indifference. It’s eyes were emerald green with a pale white line down the center. Though they resembled none she had ever seen before, Susan thought she recognized the expression they held.

It’s tired, she thought. He’s tired….

"Your getting fat." Gregory said. He smiled while he spoke, which seemed an odd choice considering the growing number of diminutive figures that were emerging from out of the woods and moving to surround them.

"Your late," the creature replied, "But that does seem to be the custom of your kind."

“How would you know, you’ve only ever met one of us?”

“I surmised.”

Susan couldn’t make up her mind whether Gregory was being clever, sarcastic, or just suicidaly rude. She did hope she’d find out before the things in front of her decided to end her life.

"How long has it been Kort?" Gregory continued.

There was a pause then, "About a year and a half."

"Shit!"

At the profanity Susan thought she caught just the faintest hint of a sparkle in the creatures eyes.

"The queen warned that this was possible."

Gregory rolled his eyes and shrugged. “I know,” he replied, “I just didn't think there was any chance she’d be right."

"Which only goes to prove how unwise we all are to trust you.” Kort said. “However, I must admit it will not be completely unpleasant to have you back."

"Kind of you to say."

"And probably more than you warrant after costing me twenty pieces."

"And how prey tell did I do that?"

The creature performed a strange contortion of it’s facial feature that might have been a smile.

"You returned,” he said. “with others of you kind. I bet that fool Heromon, there weren't any more like you."

# # # #


The next few days were some of the most frustrating, and also the best of Susan’s life. The Ehrouqi, as Gregory explained they were called, were a eccentric, and at times infuriating folk. They seemed to regard Susan, Tony, and even Gregory as outsiders, not to be trusted. Yet at the same time, they didn't really seem to trust each other. Greg tried to explain that these were a more solitary folk, than humans. They preferred to dwell in small family clans, spread out over huge portions of country, rather than to concentrate their populations into cities. Yet they were connected in a way the people she had known were not. They would gather when they were threatened, to worship, or to collaborate when some project larger than a house needed built.

At first Susan thought they reminded her of the Vulcan's from Star Trek, only to realize very early on that this description didn't fit them at all. As a race they were not unaffected, merely private, and operating on a completely different set of emotional queues than human beings. It was fascinating. Susan couldn't imagine anything she’d rather do with her time than to be allowed to study the Ehrouqi, and hopefully to one day come to an understanding these strangers. She decided to ask Gregory for his observations on the race, as he was getting her settled into a smallish house which seemed to be the only structure she'd seen which was build to human scale.

The outside of the building was constructed of precisely cut stone, which locked in fine seams on four sides, eliminating the need for mortar. Inside the place reeked of a years inoccupation. The beads were dusty, as were the hangings on the walls. It looked as though the structure had been flooded at least once, judging from the combination of mud and vines deposited the floors. She approached him after he’d sent Anthony to get some firewood. She hesitated to ask, though she was unsure why. Gregory for his part did little to ease her fears.

"They're their own kind of folk." He grunted, grimacing down at his soiled floors. "Most of them won't learn your language, which I suppose is only right since we’re intruding on them. "

"They don't seem very friendly though." She replied.

"They are in there own way." A thought seemed to pass invisibly through Greg's mind. "Anyway, this'll be your room. Feel free to clean it or not to as you like. It's the best bed I have, though that’s not saying much.”

"This used to be your room didn't it?"

"Yep and it will be again, if you break anything." Gregory threw her few bags on the mattress which seemed to be constructed whole of some kind of antler. "Now if you don't mind, I’d like to get to work on the fires. It gets cold here at night."

Susan shivered recalling the previous night that had been spent traveling towards Gregory’s home in a wind storm.

"I'll start on the floors." She said.

"You don't have to."

"That's okay I'd rather be doing something."

"Suit yourself. I'll get the lad to help you."

"How's his room?"

"Not this nice."

Wow, Susan thought, for once I’m glad I’m not him.

# # # #


The next day consisted almost entirely of the completion of the moving in process. It was a miracle, Susan thought, that the fireplaces still worked. It did indeed get very cold at night in Theria M’Rath. Especially in Greg’s little stone-floored dwelling, where all the heat from the fireplace seemed to get sucked directly into the ground. When at last the master of the home proclaimed their work done, nearly 23 hours had passed since their arrival.

That night Susan stared out the narrow slit window in her room at stars she could not name, wondering what was to become of her and her friend. As she closed her eyes, a sound resembling that of a questionably tuned guitar came drifting down the hall from where Gregory spent his nights. It was an odd tune the makeshift harp sang, there was no recognizable melody, but it was a comforting song all the same. As it grew steadily in volume, the sound of a thousand flutes of varying pitch and timbre began to sing a soft impossibly beautiful accompaniment, somehow calling to Susan’s mind the image of fireflies dancing on a spring lawn in a simpler time. Susan wept as it grew to a shattering crescendo, then faded shuddering into silence. There was a moment of respite, then a new more lively tune began. How long it went on, Susan would never know. She fell asleep somewhere during that second act.

# # # #


"Look's like one of those recorder things they used to make us play back in grade school."

Tony held the strange flute out to Susan, as if he were asking for her support.

Only one way to find out.

“What is it Gregory?"

Their benefactor grinned down at them with pride. He picked the instrument out of Susan’s hands delicately, as if it were the most fragile thing in the world.

"It's the closest I've been able to come to a flute."

"What's it for?" She wondered aloud. Susan caught the sarcastic roll of Tony’s eyes and chose for the moment to ignore the slight.

"The Ehrouqi use their noses to make the sounds they need to speak to each other.” Gregory answered. “I've never been able to duplicate it myself so I started using this to speak to them."

Anthony was shifting nervously off to the side. Susan could feel him about to speak a moment before the words left his mouth.

"Why didn't you just teach them all English?" Susan cringed and even Tony seemed a little embarrassed by the question.

"They weren't that interested in learning." Greg replied. “I don’t know if you’ve picked up on it, but we’re not exactly the returning hero’s around here.”

"Kort knew English."

"Kort learned it as a sign of respect to me a long time ago." Gregory said with finality. Susan was wishing she could work up the nerve to ask him about his past. But somehow knew she wouldn’t. Tony moved to fetch a drink from the water basin. He seemed to have recovered from the poor reception of his last question. As before Susan knew he was going to ask something before he spoke.

"What for?"

Interesting, she thought. It was pleasing to her that he would be wondering the same thing as she was.

"As I recall," a melodious voice said from just outside the cottages front door. "He nearly got me killed."

"Nearly," Greg said waving Kort in, "being the operative word."

"I'm confident you'll try harder next time."

Kort turned from Gregory towards the two youths. "From this moment forward, your instructor and I will only be using the language of my people to communicate. The first stage of your training will have ended when you can understand what we are saying to each other and make yourself understood to us."

"Why do we have to learn another language?" Tony whined. Susan wondered when he was going to stop asking questions.

"I do hope your a bit brighter than that question indicates," Kort said.

Gregory interjecting before Kort could add more, "some of the people who are going to teach you don't know English. Why would they?"

Tony’s face turned a brilliant shade of red which only deepened when Susan gave his hand a supportive squeeze. "Oh, sorry."

“Don’t be,” Kort said. “Just be smarter.”

Tony looked like he was going to say something else but Susan gave his had a second harder squeeze, this time to keep her friend from saying anything that might insult their host. Kort continued apparently oblivious.

"Also this will be a great deal easier if you don't use English at all for the next few weeks." he said.

"I can't!" Susan blurted. Her heart was suddenly wedged painfully in her throat. This had all suddenly begun to remind her forcibly of her mothers game of silence. Both Gregory and Anthony seemed taken aback by her reaction.

The little alien, Kort regarded her with unabashed revulsion. Somehow at that moment his disapproval was more important to her than that of her companions.

"The giant tells me you are stronger than you appear," he said. There was an aspect in those jade eyes that might have been kindness. "I do not believe this to be true, but I have been wrong about your kind in the past. I would prefer to be in your case, as my friend informs me, much depends upon your successful training."

Susan thought she was going to cry, right there in front of the stranger. She wondered when she had gotten so weak. She drew herself up to her full height, a ridiculous act considering with whom she spoke, and leveled a detached gaze at Kort. She was just about to speak when Anthony cut in, causing her to realized she’d no idea what she was about to say.

"Give us an hour a day…" he said reasonably, "to compare notes."

"Done." Both Kort and Greg replied in unison.

Just then Kort gave a burst of warbling speech, that somehow affected disinterest and Greg replied with a series of notes on his flute that were equally unintelligible but more upbeat. So Susan's third day in Theria M’Rath was comprised of her first futile attempts to learn the Ehrouqi speech. As the day wore on, she discovered that the silence was not as suffocating as she had expected.

What was interesting, to Susan, was the varying approaches she and her friend took to learning the new language. Tony, whom she recalled was quite a savant on the recorder, fell upon the flute at once and began practicing scales. Every once in a while he would point at an object and either Greg or Kort would send out a blast of song which presumably was the things name. Tony would then practice the whistling until he thought he had it right. It was an aggressive approach, maybe even the best one but not for her. Susan chose to listen quietly off to the side as Gregory, Kort and Tony went about their day to day tasks. It was a slow method and Anthony accused her more than once of not trying hard enough, but Susan just kept quietly off to the side and waited for it all to start making sense. This was especially true at night, when the songs of the Ehrouqi would fill her dreams.

So the days drew on as Susan became immersed in the language she was attempting to learn. It wasn’t a week before she caught herself understanding a few scattered words. With each passing day the new world around Susan began to open itself up to her. She only wished Gregory’s words would stop interrupting her thoughts. Someone else would be helping train her.

And who, pretrel would that be.

# # # #


"Your missing the consonants."

"What consonants, they're squeaking at each other."

"It's there. Listen to Kort when he says his name, you can hear the K."

Tony groaned in the silence of their hour long reprieve. Susan could tell he really wasn’t in the right mood to handle criticism. Still, there didn’t seem anything else to talk about. The pair sat separated by mere feet in the corner of Susan’s room, but for all the closeness the proximity lent them it could have been miles.

"How can I make a K sound, and blow on a damn flute at the same time?"

He handed the thing up to her frustrated but controlling his temper.

"I think Greg uses the back of his throat."

Kort and Greg were down the hall, but Susan ignored them. They had yet to partake in the bartered hour of free speech. They sat smoking the long pipe that Kort had taken to bringing on his daily visits. The smoke hung low in the building making gray-green shadows dance along the floor and scenting the whole house with a musky odor.

"Which reminds me," Tony said, taking the contraption back from her. "When are you going start practicing with yours."

"Don't know, maybe when I figure out what I want to say I'll try and learn how to say it."

"Women," Tony called over his shoulder towards Greg, but neither their instructor nor his associate seemed to have heard.

# # # #


That night Gregory played his makeshift guitar again, this time with a much more practiced hand, and again he was accompanied by more Ehrouqi than Susan could count. She stayed up most of the night listening to the infinite delicate combinations of sound her benefactors were able to produce, each moment wondering what it all meant. After about an hour she was able to pinpoint Kort's voice amongst the others. His song was a desperate, broken kind of thing. It seemed to speak of loss, and loneliness, and a terrible frantic kind of hope. Without thinking Susan began to whistle a soft counter-harmony to Kort's more aggressive, almost manic vocalization. As she drifted off to sleep at last, she continued whistling as if trying to sooth the desperation she heard in Kort, with her own more simple song.

As she sat teetering on the edge of night she heard Gregory put down his instrument. Kort, sitting beside him, was drinking a soft tea that was his families specialty.

“Does your wife know you play like that?”

“It never came up.”

“It should, the next time you speak with her. No woman could stay angry if you played like that for her.”

“I’d have to remember that, if I played for her.”

“You wouldn’t, even if you did. To much pride banging around in that empty head of yours.”

“What do you think of our little songbird back there.”

"The girl has a good ear, and she works hard...”

"Actually I thought the same thing about the boy."

“You know it’s hard for me to think of them as a children when their both twice my size.”

“Sorry but that’s what they are. Surely you don’t think Susan the harder of the two workers.”

“You only like his approach because you learned the same way." Kort chuckled softly. Gregory didn’t seem insulted. "The boy may get the vocabulary first, but your Susan has a chance to be eloquent."

"Here's hoping your right."

There was a silence then, "What do I tell Keirin?"

"Tell her the truth, the girl is a kind enough soul, but she’s damaged goods. She hasn’t the vaguest conception of how powerful she is, and when it comes to that, she's powerful enough to level most of this countryside if the queen isn’t careful."

"She may tell us to leave."

“Us?”

“No more journeys alone my brother, he wouldn’t have wanted it.”

“If she tells us to go we'll go, but she won't."

"You think you know the women, but the years have changed her."

"I knew someone who trusted her once, same one who trusted me."

Kort shuffled in his chair, then raised his tea. "Departed friend's." He said. After that for a while Susan slept. At no point during the conversation did she realize they were speaking in Ehrouqi.

# # # #


After another four day's Susan came to two conclusions. The first was that she needed to hear more than just Kort and Greg talking to each other. The second was that Tony needed an alternative to the flute Greg had given him. The problem was not so much a lack of ability with the thing, as it was that Tony simply could not duplicate the consonants sounds he needed to while simultaneously hitting the right notes. He'd developed a bit of a block with the thing, his progress stalling after the first few days. Their hours of conversation seemed to consist mainly of long moaning sessions, which had quickly grown EXTREMELY boring.

That morning, Susan decided to disassemble her own flute with one of the knifes that Greg used for skinning food. To get a better idea of how it worked she decided to split it down the middle, taking care to cut only the skin and not the reed that was inside. When blown on, the reed would vibrate at a pitch determined by the rate of air flowing around it. It had ten holes in the top as well as four in the bottom, which gave it more than enough range to communicate in the Ehrouqi language.

The problem with Greg’s design, she decided was the fact that you had to used your tongue to cause the reed to vibrate. It was also to narrow at the tip, forcing you to hold it in place with your teeth. If she could just do close to the same thing with a whistle it would free up the users tongue to make consonants.
The answer didn't come to her untill later that day, as she was walking by a blacksmith, who's name she thought was Loorieth.

At her feet there were several pieces of scrap metal the smith had pounded flat and discarded. The idea came to her in a great burst of inspiration. She rushed up to the smith who was working on a project trying to ignore her.

"Can I have this?" she asked him, without realizing she'd spoken his language. The smith although stunned lent his approval. Susan thanked that man, and ran off without thinking of what she'd done. She had to find another, much narrower reed. Kort will know, she thought and headed back to Greg's home. She found him first.

It was as she blurted her idea for the new better flute to Greg that Susan realized she wasn't speaking English. She faltered, but after a moments hesitation continued the half whistle half speech she'd been studing every night.

"Need a reed," she repeated, indicating the pieces of the dismantled flute in her hand. "Smaller one."

"You don't seem to need one." Greg said, beaming as he sounded his flute.

"Not me," she said. "Tony."

"How big around do you need it?" Greg asked.

Susan couldn't think of the right combination of sounds so she held out her index finger. "This big," she said.

"How long."

Susan didn't even know if the Ehrouqi had a measurement system. She indicated a length of about three inches with her finger.

"This much," she said.

"I'll get it Susan."

Her name sounded odd in the new language, but it was unmistakably her own. In the hour it took for Greg to return with the promised reed, Susan had shocked Kort by greeting him joyously as he arrived, and then scared Tony by bursting into his room running around it naming anything she could find. When Greg returned, all her attention became concentrated on finishing the simpler whistle she was envisioning in her head. It took her about two hours to file and groove the scrap metal. She then hollowed the reed, fixed a stopper of cork-like material in one end, and inserted the metal filament in the other end. At that point she was at a loss for how to bind the whole thing together and to vary the rate of airflow, aside from varying how hard you blew.

This impasse lasted just long enough for her to grow genuinely afraid she wasn't going to be able to pull the whole thing off after all. That's when Kort who'd been watching her progress avidly approached her with a ceramic jar of what looked like maple syrup. The Ehrouqi took the long metal hook she'd used to hollow the reed and dabbed it in the contents of the jar, then he began to smear a thin coating over the joints in Susan's creation, taking care to provide a generous amount at the mouthpiece. About an hour later Tony tried the new device. Using his lips to vary the diameter of the hole he was blowing into. It took about fifteen minute for him to gain the range of sound that he had with the Greg’s device. It took a little longer for him to master controlling the pitch and tone with just his lungs and lips. Within two hours though he had already started adding some of the consonant sounds that had been vexing him.

"It good," he said to her in his first clear Ehrouqi. Susan had never been so proud of anything in her life.

# # # #


The next two weeks were spent truly mastering the Ehrouqi language. Even after Susan realized that she could do without Greg's flute, it was still sometime before she could follow a conversation between Kort and Greg and completely understand everything that was said. She and Tony were also learning the customs as well. Some of this was done through the kind of observation that Susan had wanted to do since her arrival, some through interaction with those Ehrouqi who happened to live near by. It didn't seem to be an accident that most of these tended to be craftsman, and that most of those craftsman specialized in the making of weapons.

Tony's training also began to entail more physical conditioning and fewer lessons in the spoken word, as time progressed. Kort began awakening them both every morning. They would eat, and Kort would drag Tony outside, not to be seen till dinner that evening. Susan's spent her time studying the written Ehrouqi under Gregory's less than gentle tutelage. It didn't help that there were six very different dialects, which were all symbolic interpretations of the same spoken language. Still Susan progressed steadily, which could not be said for Tony. They kept their customary hour of English after sundown though neither of them needed it any longer. During this time he would often complain about his treatment. Susan would smile as sympathetically as she could but most days she couldn’t hide the fact that she was happy. Tony to his credit never seemed to hold it against her.

"I'm telling yeah, that little bastard is trying to kill me."

“I’m sure he’s only shooting for a partial mauling.”

It was just under sunset on the 33rd day since their arrival. Susan was sitting on the bed that Gregory had given her. Tony, who’d finished his transition to professional grouch, sat on the floor of her room by the fire place.

"What did he have you do today."

"I was carrying rocks till around noon. Not stacking them, not carrying them somewhere, just carrying them around."

“Maybe, he’s trying to bulk you up.”

What Susan didn’t say was that the results of Kort’s training were already starting to show. Tony had gained a considerable amount of weight since their arrival. His shoulders were broader and his chest and arms seemed to be adding muscle. She slapped him lightly on the arm. She didn’t have a reason to. It had been just an impulse, one which she immediately regretted following.

"How did you know it was noon? I thought you broke your watch."

"Oh, noon's when he tells me I suck at everything."

"I thought he told you that all the time."

"Nope, normally he just screams that he hates me, and he hopes I die soon."

"I didn't know he said that. He shouldn’t."

"I can take it, but I sure wish he didn’t say it with so much feeling."

"What happened after the rocks?"

"He had me hit a tree with a stick for about two hours….”

“What?”

Tony rolled forward from where he’d been sitting, the briefest of smiles slipping across his face.

“It was actually my favorite part of the day. He put a couple targets on a tree, stood in my way, and told me to hit them. It was kinda fun, at least at first.

“When did it stop being fun.”

“About the time he started hitting me with his stick. After that I stretched and we came home."

“Stretched?"

"I don't know, Mr. Miagi in there says that stretching is important."

“For what?”

“Beats the hell out of me.”

“That’s Kort’s job.”

“Bite me.”

“Also, not my job.”

Tony spent the rest of that evening in what could only be described as a bona fide pout. Gregory and Kort didn't seem to mind leaving him that way, while Susan secretly wondered if there was something else bothering the boy. Her suspicion was confirmed, when later that evening she laid a hand on Tony’s shoulder. For the first time she could recall, he turned away.

"What is it?" Susan asked quietly, so that only he could hear. She was more concerned than hurt by his reaction.

"Jesus Susan I'm....."

Gregory coughed from the rooms door. Neither Susan nor Tony had any idea how long he'd been there.

"We're splitting you up tomorrow." Gregory said without preamble.

The look on Tony's face was enough to tell Susan he'd known. She turned to him.

“How long?"

Neither man answered at first.

"When were you going to tell me?" It was obvious Gregory had not expected this reaction.

"Look sweetheart, I already taught you the language did you expect to stay here the whole time."

"I expected to learn magic." She said. "Not how to whistle, really, really well."

"You will, but I won't be the one teaching you."

"Why not?"

Susan was crying. She hadn't understood how comfortable she’d gotten with the way things were, living with Gregory and Tony, learning to read the new languages, and listening to the songs at night. She would miss those most she thought. Susan got up from the bed. There was a sort of pressure building up inside her that she didn't know how to vent. Part of the problem was that she knew she was a quicker study than Greg had expected with the language. There had been a time once, she vaguely recalled, when her teachers used to tell her she was bright. It has been wonderful to be again. What if she wasn't as good at the other things as she was with this, she thought. And how did she know "splitting up" meant she was going away?

"Kort will be taking you to see a woman named Keirin L’Eriden tomorrow." Gregory said. "She will be in charge of your training from now on."

There was a finality to the statement that Susan found insulting.

"What about me?" Tony asked from the floor.

"As of tomorrow I'm taking over for Kort with you."

"But why aren’t we being trained together?" His eyes looked dead as he spoke.

Gregory switched gears suddenly, his tone going from conciliatory to darkly brooding in an instant. "The two of you have different roles to play in what is to come," he managed, seething between clinched teeth. "I can not help her become what she must be, but I can for you."

"Hey, why don't we all just settle down now tiger." Tony chimed in, getting up from the floor. “Come here, gimme a hug.”

Susan wasn’t backing down from Gregory’s anger. “I can’t believe you told Tony and not me, way to trust.”

“He was ready for the information, and judging from your reaction your still not.”

“Am too..” Susan blurted, feeling her face turn red even as Tony cut her off.

“Nice retort there Suz,” he said. “Positively Shakespearean. Now can we all stop talking about me like I’m not here and get back to that hug. ”

"Your not here," Gregory said, his mood again shifting dizzyingly. "But you will be."

The older man slapped Tony hard on the back and continued speaking. “Sooner or later son, You will be"

Without thinking Susan added, "You forgot to add 'Or die trying'"

Tony didn't seem to find that funny at all.

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