A Ranger From Adamnar

The following morning came very early for Alana. Nata was not back yet. They were supposed to be out there for three days. Apparently trainees stayed out there as long as it took them to begin to feel the life of the forest. According to Ciaran, it took most trainees two to three tests to advance to the second phase of their training.

She was up and ready to go before dawn, as was Laren, but not too many of the other trainees were. Alana asked one of the other trainees, a woman named Falar, “Why isn’t every one up after their tests?”

“Not every trainer likes to start at dawn,” Falar said as she tied her long blonde hair tight to the back of her head. “Most of them start after breakfast. You and I have Trainer Pellou. He always starts before dawn and he doesn’t come into the stronghold often.”

“Oh, that would be why I’ve never seen you in the morning before,” Alana said, hoisting her backpack on her back. She looked back down the bay before they walked out and saw that Laren was leaning against the end of her bunk beds staring at her.

Pellou’s group of twelve was fully assembled once Alana and Falar got there. Since Pellou hadn’t said what to bring, Alana had packed almost everything in her backpack, including a few days’ hard rations and climbing gear. The group took off running and headed straight south. Pellou didn’t lead the run, choosing instead to run next to this trainee then that, allowing a young woman with long, braided black hair to lead.

“We’re avoiding the trainees still testing,” Cadius speculated aloud after an hour of running.

“Good guess,” Pellou said. “You are correct. As we run, keep your senses aware for other trainees, Rangers and creatures. We will each take turns leading the run. Our goal today is a simple one in honor of our three new members.” Pellou ran without making a sound and spoke calmly without any heavy breathing. “Garrick, you’re up after Shiri. Keep us running to Parsin Cliff and then we’ll head east along it.”

“How,” Tulan huffed, “far away,” he puffed, “is Parsin Cliff?”

“Two days,” Garrick said.

“I hope you packed enough food,” Pellou said. “But we’ll also be hunting tomorrow if you haven’t.” Alana got the impression that Pellou wasn’t even working to run at their speed.

After a morning of running Tulan asked no one in particular, “Is it tomorrow yet?” A few of the other trainees laughed. Alana split her food with him. All of Pellou’s other trainees were well stocked. Although Cadius had brought more food than Alana, it was only one meal’s worth for him. He had lost weight over the last five months and Alana suspected he would lose a lot more under Pellou.

They spent the better part of that evening learning how to dress a deer. “Any longer and I would have started eating it raw,” Cadius said after the lengthy preparation process, which Pellou had described in excruciating detail. “I think he’s just making me suffer on purpose,” Cadius whispered to Alana as they stood on the cliff looking out over the forested valley far below.

“You could use a little thinning up,” Pellou called over to him from the head of the single file line, about thirty feet farther along the cliff face.

Parsin cliff was a five thousand foot wall. It curved gently to the east by southeast. They ran the entire next day along the cliff face and made camp about half way around the rim. Cadius, for his complaint, got to carry most of the deer. In the middle of the second day of running around the rim, Pellou stopped them. “We’re here.” ‘Here’ didn’t seem to Alana to be any different from anywhere else.

“Now,” Pellou said, “we climb.” Several of the other trainees started unpacking climbing gear from their backpacks. As with most tasks, Pellou spoke almost continuously as they descended the sheer cliff. He climbed around the face from trainee to trainee giving them tips on their climbing. They had ropes but only used them for particularly tricky spots. Mostly they used small devices to help them grip and stick to the face.

As night approached Pellou called them all to join him on a ledge. They spent the night there, strung up in hammocks. Just after sundown it began raining and rained all through the next day. They began navigating the remainder of the face very slowly and carefully. Several of the trainees slipped, including Alana, but none fell. In Alana’s case, it was another female trainee named Elsa who grabbed her arm just as Alana was tipping out away from the wall.

“Easy, Alana,” Elsa said as she gently pushed her back against the face. “Try to lean in while you climb. Leaning out seems easy enough, but it’s the fast way down.” Alana leaned against the rock with her eyes closed and breathed deeply to steady her nerves.

“Thanks,” Alana said. “I’m not in that much of a hurry to get down.”

About two thirds of the way down, Alana could see another trainee’s left leg was starting to shake. Pellou also noticed and quickly scrabbled over the wall to him and helped him get a better hand hold to rest. Pellou made certain the trainee was resting secure, then moved back off to the left side of the group to help another trainee find handholds over a slight negative slope section. Alana clung to the rock to rest and watched the trainee. He was sweating profusely and looked more than a little scared.

“Marker, are you alright?” Alana asked him. She could see he wasn’t.

“I- I’m,” Marker stammered. He shifted his weight and regripped a small outcropping, but his hand slipped off of it. His left leg slipped off of its rock as well and screamed as he fell backwards away from the wall.

Alana shouted, “Marker, no!” She reached out her left hand to him to try to grab him, but he was twenty feet away. Despite the distance, she began to feel the weight of his fall. A small part of her mind wondered how she could that, but the rest of her energy was focused on saving Marker. Time slowed. He was now completely off the wall. Although he was beginning to pick up speed, to Alana it seemed as though he was slowing down. It also felt to her like she had gripped his hand and he was now pulling her off the wall. She struggled to hold on to her right hand grip. She leaned into the wall hard to try to increase the use of her legs but the weight of Marker was tearing her slowly off the wall.

Pellou was suddenly beside her on the wall. “Let go of him!” he shouted.

“No,” Alana shouted in reply over the rain. “He’ll die.”

“I cannot save you both. Alana you must let go.” Pellou took one hand off the rock and hit Alana in the shoulder. “Dammit Alana, let go!”

With a great rush of hopelessness, she let go of him in her mind. Instantly the heavy weight that was tearing her off the wall was gone. A few more seconds passed. Alana stared into Pellou’s wildly furious eyes. He looked away briefly and then was gone.

Over the next ten minutes Pellou carefully teleported each trainee to the base of the cliff, starting with Marker, then Alana, then all the remaining trainees ending with Tulan, who was clearly the most cut out for climbing. Pellou had to pry Alana’s fingers off the rock to get her to grab on to him for the journey.

When Alana was on the ground she ran to Marker just as soon as Pellou let go of her. “Marker, are you alright?” Alana asked him. She put a hand on his shoulder. He was still shaking. Alana couldn’t tell if it was from the cold rain or from shock. She shook his shoulder gently and said again, “Marker, are you alright?”

Marker kept staring at the ground. “I could feel you,” he said.

“I know,” Alana said. “I’m so sorry, I couldn’t hold you. I don’t understand it. I can pick up a man who weighs three times my weight. I’ve been able to do it for years, though I never told anyone. I don’t know why I couldn’t hold on to you.”

“Alana,” Marker said, looking up at her. Alana could see that fear still remained in his eyes. “You were nowhere near me and I clearly felt your hand grab my forearm. It was like you were right next to me. How did you do it?”

Alana couldn’t meet his gaze. She felt like a failure. “I didn’t do anything, Marker,” Alana said, looking at the ground. “Pellou saved you, not me. I wasn’t of any use.” She stood and walked away from the other trainees.

“That’s not true,” Marker said as he looked after her. Alana pretended not to hear him.

Once all the trainees were together on the ground, Pellou ordered camp to be made. Alana stood off by herself, so Pellou ordered her to pitch in. “Hey, Alana, get hopping. This camp won’t set itself.”

Alana didn’t talk again the rest of the afternoon and all through dinner, though both Tulan and Cadius tried to engage her. She limited her responses to one word answers. The rain had let up just before dinner was ready, but the wetness still hung heavy in the air. A few hours more and the clouds broke and two moons shone through, one in full, making the trees sparkle.

“Alana, stop torturing yourself,” Pellou said as he sat down next to her at the fire. All the other trainees had gone to bed, but Alana could tell they were all listening. She didn’t care.

“I couldn’t save him,” she said.

“You were nowhere near him and you shouldn’t have tried,” Pellou said.

Alana was frustrated and his words hurt. “Why shouldn’t I have tried to save him? Why should I have just let him fall off the wall? Why should I do any less than everything I can do to save someone?” she asked, forgetting all propriety. She stared at him angrily, defying him to get angry too.

“Alana,” Pellou said calmly, “you have to learn your limits. You apparently have great abilities, according to about five different Ranger Lords, but you don’t have any sense of when to use them and when not to. You need to learn self control. Having these great powers won’t be of any use to you if you can’t learn to control them and use them wisely.”

“I guess I should have just let him fall?” Alana asked sarcastically.

“Your greatest mistake” Pellou said, “was in not letting go. I practically had to knock you off the wall to get you to let go of him. You wasted precious seconds. If we had been closer to the ground, I might not have been able to get to him in time.”

Alana set her jaw and stared into the fire. Pellou sighed and stared at her for a moment. “So today you learned that your gifts have limits,” Pellou said finally. “That lesson is more valuable than learning you had them in the first place. In time you’ll understand that.”

For the remainder of their week-long journey they ran through the valley out to its mouth. They took the following week to double back towards the stronghold, uphill in ladder fashion all the way back. Alana’s muscles hurt in new ways after only two days of running up the constant gradual grade.

“If you ask me,” Tulan said while running next to Alana when they were near the back of the group, “Pellou is nuts. He doesn’t seem to care about life or death. I mean, how many people climb a five thousand foot wall their first time on ropes?” They both veered to the left to avoid several snakes.

“It was a tough climb for me and I’ve been climbing my whole life,” Tulan said. He took another drink from his water skin then offered it first to Alana and then to Falar, who was running just ahead of Alana. Their path back to the stronghold remained circuitous as they were still practicing avoiding all creatures. The fact that they had come so close to some snakes probably meant the current ladder leader was getting tired and needed to be swapped out.

“Pellou,” Falar said, “is not interested in what you can do. He is interested in what you can’t do. He pushes us because we can take it. Everyone in this group distinguished themselves to get into this group and we will all probably continue to do so after we move on.”

“Yeah, but, it’s not right to risk trainees lives like this,” Tulan said as he concentrated on a tree he was fast approaching and made all the branches get out of his way.

“You’re getting a lot better with that,” Pellou said, running next to Tulan and seeming to have appeared from out of nowhere.

Thank you, sir,” Tulan said, blushing around the ears.

“I don’t care if you talk about me, Tulan,” Pellou said. “I’ve never cared what anyone said about me.” He chuckled, “Which is probably why I’m not a Ranger Lord. Being a Ranger is tough business. You will often have the lives of ten or a hundred people in your care, and that’s just when you first start out. Later, if you become a Ranger Lord, it will be more like thousands.” He jogged forward to be next to Alana.

“Alana, you don’t seem to be trying very hard to feel the forest,” Pellou said. “You’d better get back up on your horse or I’ll take you out of the show.”

Nice of him to put it in those terms, Alana thought. Pellou was right, though, and she knew it. She had been brooding for three days. As Pellou ran forward to the head of the ladder again, Alana said to Tulan, “Tulan, thanks for trying to cheer me up, but Pellou is right. I’ve been in a lot worse life and death situations than that wall and I didn’t have as bad a problem when all those people died.”

After ten days of running uphill, they were now about a mile away from the stronghold. They slowed to a walk and ate lunch on the move. Alana told Tulan about the Silver Arrow tavern massacre as they ate.

“Yeah, but that was different,” Tulan said.

He didn’t elaborate, but Alana began to think about it just the same. What, exactly, was different? By the time they were finished with lunch, having left no sign of their eating along the way, she believed she knew the difference. Two words: Uncle Iliard.

Alana lay in her bunk staring up at the bottom of Nata’s bunk. For only the second time in five and half months, she had not gotten up for Neve’s morning run. She had feigned deep sleep when Nata tried to wake her. Today was her day of rest and she didn’t feel like getting up early. The truth of it was, she didn’t feel like doing anything. Her failure on the cliff still irked her. Pellou’s attitude didn’t help either. How could she have done nothing? It didn’t make sense.

Finally, she got tired of doing nothing, so she got up and headed for the bath house. Maybe a nice hot bath would help. She spent an hour in the bath and came out feeling the same way she had when she went in. She decided she would go for a ride after eating some breakfast. She was walking towards the stables when a Ranger she didn’t know came up to her and said, “Lord Berol wants to see you.”

Alana frowned and asked, “Did he say why?”

The Ranger shook his head and said, “Nope. He just sent me to find you.”

“Thank you,” Alana said. She sighed and headed toward the main building. She wondered what Lord Berol wanted. She hoped Pellou hadn’t told him about her problem on the cliff. The Ranger on duty at the main door seemed to be expecting her. “Lord Berol is in his office,” he told her. Alana headed towards Lord Berol’s office feeling more and more anxious as she went. She had been behaving childishly over the past few days and she knew it.

She knocked hesitantly on Lord Berol’s door and heard him call out, “Come.”

She opened the door and said, “Lord Berol, you wanted to see me?”

Lord Berol looked up, “Ah yes, Alana. Come in.”

Alana walked into the room and her eyes went wide. “Uncle Illy!” She ran over to her uncle, who was standing by the window, and threw her arms around his neck. Both of them missed the amused smile on Lord Berol’s face. “I thought you weren’t coming until the end of the year,” Alana said happily.

“I wasn’t going to,” he answered as he returned her hug, “But Lord Berol sent me a message telling me that you had passed your second phase test on the first try. I had to come to congratulate you in person. That is a great accomplishment.”

“Thank you,” she said softly.

Iliard put his arm around her shoulder and said, “Why don’t we go for a walk and you can tell me all about your test.” He looked over at Lord Berol and said, “If you’ll excuse us, Van.”

Lord Berol stood, “Of course, Master Iliard.”

They walked out the front gate and into the forest. Alana told Iliard about her test. She told him about the wolf and about hearing the forest speak to her. When she spoke of the dark presence that had intruded on her communion with the forest, he stopped in his tracks. “You mean this person actually contacted your mind?”

“I don’t know if it was a person or not. It didn’t feel the same as the forest. It felt evil. I pushed it out.”

Iliard’s eyes widened a bit. “You forced out a mindlink?”

“Is that bad?” Alana asked.

“No! No, not at all. It’s just surprising. That usually requires a lot of training.”

“Oh,” she replied quietly. They started walking down the path again. After a few minutes of silence she asked, “Uncle Iliard, what am I?”

Iliard stared at her for a moment and then asked, “What do you mean?”

“You know what I mean.” Alana lashed out at him. “I can do all these things I’m not supposed to be able to do. I’m training to be a Ranger but I can do things that no Ranger can do. Why? You told me I was destined for great things. What things? The other day I tried to save someone from falling off a cliff. I held onto to him without actually touching him. I couldn’t pull him back because I wasn’t strong enough. Pellou made me let him go and then told me I shouldn’t have tried to save him because I almost fell too. But what am I supposed to do? If I have these powers, shouldn’t I use them?”

Iliard closed his eyes and let out a soft sigh. He looked down at Alana and said, “I wish I had an answer for you. I don’t know what your future holds or what you are to become. Sometimes I think I get a glimpse of what is to come, but it fades too quickly. There is also a danger in this. Desire can distort the visions of the future.” Iliard saw her puzzled expression and explained, “I am a Wielder. By Novadi law, I must choose an heir to the Jade Dragon—one of my bloodline. I have no children, nor does it seem likely that I will ever have children. It is my wish to choose you as my heir.” He put up his hand to halt her enthusiastic response. “But my heir must be a Novadi warrior. When my mother chose me, she had seen my future and she knew what I would become. I cannot see your future.”

“Is that why you gave me your dagger?” Alana asked.

Iliard smiled a bit and said, “No, but yes. At that moment I was only thinking of your need. But I carry other daggers that I could have gotten to much more easily. I chose to give you that dagger because I want you to be my heir.”

Alana smiled happily. “Lord Chasimar said you must foresee great things for me to give me this dagger. But I wondered how she knew you were a Novadi just by looking at the dagger.”

Iliard stopped walking, held out his hand and said, “Let me show you.” After Alana had given him the dagger, he leaned closer to her and pointed to a gold emblem on the base of the hilt, “This,” he said, indicating the silver rune in the center of the gold disc, “is my name. And this,” he went on, turning the dagger over, “is the sign of the Novadi order.” The emblem of the Novadi order was a silver disc engraved with a gold rune. “Only Novadi wear these daggers. We receive them when we become Novadi masters. Terin Novar Arianna designs each one personally. If a non-Novadi is seen wearing one, other Novadi and Ranger Lords take exception—mostly because it is likely that someone killed a Novadi to get the dagger.”

“Oh,” Alana said. “That would explain the look Lord Chasimar gave me before I told her you were a Novadi warrior.”

“And what look would that be, Alana Nadran?”

Alana and Iliard turned and saw Lord Chasimar and patrol leader Benarion standing there. Iliard smiled and said, “You must be Lord Chasimar. I wondered if you two were going to stop by or continue on.” He put out his hand, “I am…”

“Iliard Candril, Wielder of the Jade Dragon,” Lord Chasimar interrupted. “I know who you are, Master Candril. I was at your installation.” Then she indicated Ben and added, “This is Benarion Hadrigan, one of my patrol leaders.” She looked over at Alana and asked, “Alana, is this the uncle who gave you the dagger?”

“Yes. Lord Chasimar,” she answered. Iliard let out a silent sigh. He knew what was coming next.

“Then,” Lord Chasimar went on, “You are not Alana Nadran. You are Alana Candril, the one who is missing.”

Alana shot a worried glance at Iliard, who nodded his head slightly. “Yes, Lord Chasimar,” Alana answered. “I’m the one who’s missing.”

“I see,” Lord Chasimar said as she focused her piercing blue eyes on Iliard. “I’m sure, Master Candril, that you must have a very good reason for bringing your niece here under such circumstances.”

Iliard cleared his throat and said, “I need to spend a little more time with Alana, but then I would be happy to clarify the situation.”

Lord Chasimar bowed her head slightly and smiled. “Of course, Master Candril. I will be in the stronghold.” She then turned and headed for the front gate.

Ben lingered behind Lord Chasimar and asked Alana, “So, how is it with Crazy Pellou?”

Alana rolled her eyes and replied, “Hard. We climbed down Parsin cliff our first week out.”

Ben chuckled. “I remember that. I was sore for the next two weeks.. You’re lucky you had today off. You won’t get many of those with Pellou.”

“You had Pellou too?”

“Yep. It took me a full year to get into the third phase of training.”

Alana grimaced. “I don’t know how long he’s going to keep me there.”

“Until you learn what you need to know Alana Candril,” Iliard interjected. He looked at Ben and said, “Benarion, I trust you will keep Alana’s secret to yourself.”

“Of course, Master Candril,” Ben replied. “Alana is safe with me.”

Iliard raised an eyebrow and held Ben’s gaze for a long moment. A slight frown creased his brow. He glanced at Alana, who was smiling at Ben. “Well,” he said a bit gruffly, “I need to speak with Alana. If you’ll excuse us, Benarion.”

“Yes, Master Candril,” Ben said. To Alana he said, “I’ll see you in the dining hall.” Then he followed Lord Chasimar through the front gate. Iliard saw Alana’s gaze follow the young Ranger as he walked away. “Alana,” he said, bringing her attention back to him, “Tell me what happened on the cliff.”

When Alana finished her tale, Iliard said, “Pellou is right. You need to know your limitations. Pellou didn’t tell you not to try, he said you needed to know when to let go. What good would it have been if you have fallen as well? Then you would have forced Pellou to choose between you and Marker. That’s a terrible choice to have to make.”

Alana looked down at the ground and murmured, “I never thought of that.”

“I know. That’s because you still have much to learn. While it’s true that you have abilities that other people don’t have, no matter how powerful you are or become, you will always need to work with other people. Even Wielders work with other people. You remember Lucien and Martea? One day you also will have companions. You must learn now to rely on the people you are traveling with and allow them to work with their own strengths. It may save your life one day.”

“I will learn, Uncle,” Alana replied softly.

“I know you will,” Iliard said as he put his arm around her shoulders. “Now,” he continued as he steered her back to the strong hold, “Tell about this young man, Benarion.”