Iryana screwed her jaw shut tight. Gods, why hadn’t she kept quiet? She wanted to puke.Thiswas why she shouldn’t be around them.
Nevedya squinted at Dinhal. “What’s the big deal? They’re basically big wolves.”
Iryana’s stomach clenched. She wished that was the case.
Uncle Dinhal’s eyes grew dark. “They are not just big wolves. I fought a wolf once, almost twenty years ago. Came upon me when I was packing up camp.”
The Kleesolds sank into more relaxed poses as if excited for a story to give them a brief reprieve, despite the warning on their uncle’s face.
“Like I’d been taught, I made myself big, more of a threat to the wolf. I roared and swung my sword. It leaped at my neck, but I knocked it out of the way. And you know what it did then?”
The courtyard grew silent as he waited for one of them to answer. No one did.
Iryana almost took the opportunity to slink away while they were all so focused on her uncle, but it would only make things worse.
“It ran away,” he snapped. “You know why? They can be territorial, yes, but they are more defensive toward humans than anything else. It was without its pack and had no great reason to want me dead. When the wolf realized I was a threat, it slunk back into the woods. If I hadn’t had my sword, and it had been motivated to do so, the wolf would have easily killed me. It would take far more to make one dakya to give up on a potential kill. If it has any chance, it won’t give up, even if you injure it, even if it’s dying. The dakii only care about killing us. And if you try to run, that will only drive the beast into a greater frenzy—and itwillbe faster than you.”
Fear blossomed in Nevedya’s eyes, and it was well-earned. The dakii were a nightmare come to life. No one knew where they came from or why; they’d just suddenly been there in the forests. Their numbers growing and growing until the people of Istri could no longer fight them off.
Her uncle didn’t stop there. “A wolf would come up to my mid-thigh—most dakii come up to my shoulder, or higher. They’re big around as horses, covered in muscle, and their claws can pierce your armor, their teeth, your helmet. The raw magic of your shield is about the only thing that can keep them from ripping into you, and even that won’t stop them for long.
“You can kill a wolf with a spear, sword, or arrow with a bit of luck or training—and remember that they hunt animals bigger than they are. The dakii are far better predators, and they arebiggerthan us.” Uncle Dinhal was breathing heavier, probably thinking of the many times he had fought the vile beasts.
It was probably harsh for a seven-year-old, but that was the world they lived in. Harsher perhaps than what Iryana had said, but her cousins had little tolerance for her.
Having been without access to a metal well for fifteen years, Uncle Dinhal was the youngest of their clan to be forged in one. He had barely returned from hisforging before the dakii came. With his gruff appearance, he looked like a man whose entire adult life had been at war. Rugged beard a bit too long to be tidy, piercing haunted eyes, prominent nose, and lips that rarely smiled.
“But wecankill them,” Nevedya said quietly.
Looking over, Iryana realized Misha looked equally determined. She hated the idea of her sister out there, fighting them. But thankfully, it would be a few years before the clan would let Misha beyond the walls.
“A well-placed arrow through the vital organs, even if it’s not from a forged bow, could easily kill a wolf with a single shot. A dakya’s skin is far thicker, and even a shot that looks like it should kill doesn’t always do the trick.”
“But the forgings…” Nevedya added.
Sometime during a person’s nineteenth or twentieth year, they went on a pilgrimage to one of the temples around Istri to forge the raw, natural magic that everyone was born with in one of the wells. Until then, the milky-white raw magic could only be pushed out of the body as a shield; the more opaque the shield, the more magic a person had. While less useful than forged magic, the shields were still amazing protection for the children and youth of Istri.
Levek glanced at her then, and Iryana immediately knew the direction of his thoughts. Iryana would turn twenty that year, Levek only a year behind her. They would be next to be forged, and while once that would have meant choosing from one of the five types of gods’ magic to forge theirs with, things were far more difficult now.
Traditionally, most guardians were metal-forged, as were most soldiers. Metal-forgings were the strongest, the sharpest, and made the best melee weapons. And most importantly now, they were the only weapons that seemed to easily do much damage to the beasts.
If only the military hadn’t become so corrupt as to seize control over all the local metal wells. To cripple everyone else so that posts like the Kleesolds’ had no choice but to pay for their “protection.” No chance for their youth to become metal-forged.
Iryana couldn’t stop her fists from clenching.
Their settlement only had air wells, and their ability to make their way to other settlements to try and access another type of magic was extremely limited. Theyhad managed to get her sister to a water temple—though the cost had likely been enormous for the brigade to let them cross their territory to do so, but every other guardian after Dinhal had been air-forged.
As Iryana would be.
“Misha, Nevedya. Stay here. Oh, and Iryana, you too,” Uncle Dinhal ordered. “The rest of you, ten laps around the house walls.”
The cousins sighed, but they didn’t argue, just took swigs of water and started jogging toward the courtyard gate. They said goodbye to the younger cousins, but didn’t bother saying anything to Iryana. She wouldn’t have expected them to.
Iryana just wanted to get out of there, so she forced herself to speak up. “Gyen Dinhal, you had a watch schedule for me?”
“Another moment,” he said.
If it were anyone else, Iryana would have pushed it, feigned some sort of excuse to leave immediately. But her uncle was the only Kleesold she spent any time around, and she hated the idea of letting him down. He never tried to push her and kept the conversations mild and minimal whenever they trained together.
