“The gifted stripped the land of its fertility,” I explain, “and now La’tari is little more than a barren wasteland. Crops won’t grow; water is scarce. Entire families starve, unable to grow food to feed themselves.”
A part of me feels bad for her. She left her homeland before the feyn came to ravage it and never saw for herself the devastation they left in their wake.
I stiffen in my seat when she cackles hoarsely. “Is that what they teach now? That land was barren long before my great grandfather was born into this world.” She shakes her head at me. “Mortal lives are short, and our memories even shorter. It is a great boon to those who wish to enslave our minds and rewrite our histories.”
“What reason would humans have to rewrite their own history?” I argue, hoping she can see reason.
“Not humans. The Vatruke.” My heart nearly stills as the word falls from her lips.
“What are the Vatruke?” I ask, not caring if she decides I am completely ignorant.
Her eyebrows shoot up and she replies, “I never expected the Vatruke to fall from the memories of the La’tari. It is they that bleed our soil of the essence of Terr.” She taps the leg of my chair with her cane, and asks, “What do you know of the sundering?”
“As much as any La’tari child.”
She puffs out a dissatisfied harrumph. “If what you’ve shared with me so far is any indication of the rest of your education, I’ll recommend that Xeyvian supply you with a history tutor, and a good one at that.”
I try not to glare at the woman as she begins her tale, “The lifeforce of Terr has always been precious to the feyn.Shivay, they call it. The world soul. The light of all life. It is the essence they draw upon to access their gifts.
When mortals first found the feyn, they feared what they did not understand. Some things don’t change much over time. No matter how many years pass, man never ceases to fear the unknown,” she adds, absentmindedly.
“We have always been too quick to pass judgment, and irrational in our fear of what is new. Back then, the feyn were powerful beyond what you or I can likely comprehend. They had access to the whole soul of Terr, notthe shredded bit of what’s been left in this veil.
The feyn fought for years to establish peace with us, to build a world where fea and mortals could dwell happily alongside one another. But the prejudice of our kind saw them as little more than creatures and treated them as such. It wasn’t long before humans began to hunt the fea.”
“Humans have never been strong enough to hunt fea,” I argue.
“You think not? The Drakai hunt them, even to this day.”
My stomach twists at the mention of my people. She isn’t wrong, but most Drakai are raised from birth to survive an encounter with the feyn and precious few make it back from such a mission.
“The fea may be more powerful than us,” she continues, “but they also have a reverence for life that mortals could never obtain in a life so fleeting. When it became clear there would never be peace between them, the most powerful among the fea gathered to discuss what could be done. The first utterance of the sundering was born that night—an agreement to separate Terr into five veils where fea could live alongside mortals, each unknown to the other. But the soul of Terr had to be divided among the five veils of our world, and it weakened the fea.
Most fea followed the path to a new world, eager to leave the humans and their wars behind, but some remained, the Vatruke among them.”
“You still haven’t told me what they are.”
“Patience, child. I’m getting to that,” she says with a tsk. “The Vatruke rebelled at the loss of their power and have done all they can to reclaim it ever since.”
“The Vatruke are fea?”
“They are a small group of feyn, powerful long ago. I suppose they may still be just that, but it’s hard to say what one becomes after many lifetimes of hatred and a lust for power and vengeance.”
“If the Vatruke are what you claim, wouldn’t they hate the humans? Why would they be working with the La’tari?” I ask.
“I’ve often asked myself the same question.” Her eyes grow glassy and she stares into the fire, her mind lost in visions only she can fathom. “Maybe they do hate the humans. But it was the feyn that stripped them of their power in the sundering, and it is humans who now help them hunt the fea intheir pursuit of recovering that power.”
It is quite the tale, and I find it impossible to discern which parts were carefully crafted by the feyn to hide the true history of our world. I can’t imagine the feyn giving up their power like she claims, or the La’tari working with a group of ancients.
Media’s eyes grow heavy and her head bobs as she fights off the sleep that I’m sure her body desperately needs.
“Thank you for your story and for lunch,” I say as I stand.
“Come back soon, child.” The words hardly make it past her lips as her chin falls against her chest and her eyes shutter closed.
I don’t linger, only taking time to bundle three nights worth of Kishek’s concoction before leaving. Sera offers me a silent wave as I slip out the door, back into the marble halls of the palace.
Awri hasn’t returned to the domed fea room by the time I make it back to check, and the light coming through the windows is quickly growing dim. My stomach twists when I consider going back to my room for the evening. There is another task I mean to accomplish today. One I should have seen to when the general was close at hand this morning.
