Page 14 of Ironhold, Trial Two

“That is Deira, the ancient goddess of beasts. They say that she could sit in the forest and summon animals to her, granting them peace, but that she was also the goddess of the hunt, able to track and kill the fiercest creatures. Once, this would have been her temple.”

“And now?” I ask, because I am certain that this place is not somewhere Lady Elara has selected at random.

“And now it is a place for beast whisperers. A place where we may come and go in peace. It is rare that there are such places. Only a day ago, one of our kind was found and executed. The guards hunt us where they can.”

“And this place?” Elara says.

“There are rooms beyond this in which some of our kind can hide from the world above. There are connections to caverns in which creatures can sleep until we need them. There are ways in and out without being seen. For now, this is the place where we will train.”

I look around at this place of beast whisperers. It seems ancient and uncared for. I can hear the drip of water somewhere in the background, and the air is damp. Light filters in from above, but it is still shadowy down here. It is obvious that the beast whisperers do not want to be seen, but still I feel they could have cleaned and repaired more.

“Before you were able to sense the animals,” Lady Elara says. “Now, I would like you to use them as your eyes. I know you've done it with birds. I can feel it when you use your powers. Let's see if you can do it with more.”

If that's to be our first exercise, at least it's something I know how to do.

I stand in the middle of the temple space, and I reach out with my powers, listening and feeling for the minds of animals all around. This is a different feeling down here than in Ironhold, or in the open air of the Colosseum. This far below ground there are no birds, but there are rats and spiders, insects and stranger slinking things.

I reach out for their minds seeing through their eyes the way I have with birds before. I see in a hundred different ways, through the strange, segmented eyes of insects, through eyes that can see in the dark, through eyes that see only in black and white and others that see colors I have no names for. I see something of the space around me, I know its extent now and I can see the carvings on its walls, depicting the hunt and the kill in so many different ways.

I see figures in cloaks like my own making their way through the space, and I swear some of them look towards the animals through whose eyes I'm staring, as if they know that I am there within them.

The creatures I am borrowing sight from allow me to map some of the space I'm in, getting a sense of the twists and turns of the ancient temple hidden in the catacombs. I can feel it as the vermin move through it, show me the world from angles I have not experienced.

And I can feel them, feel their needs, feel their wants. I am there with them. I feel the need to hunt, ambushing prey from my web. I feel the need to scavenge and can smell decomposing flesh. I feel the alien needs of insects pulling my mind in somany different ways it's hard to keep track of them. I want… I am a collection of wants and strange understandings that seem to threaten to shatter my mind with their oddness.

I'm being pulled in so many directions at once that it's hard to keep track of them all, hard to keep track of who I am and…

I feel a pressure on my arm, nails digging into my skin, bringing sudden pain. I gasp and come back to myself, looking down to see that Lady Elara’s nails have drawn blood on my forearm.

“That hurt!” I exclaim.

“Sadly necessary, and I'm sure you've been hurt worse.”

That's true. Almost everything in Ironhold is pain. The whole place is designed to toughen us to the point where we will survive and thrive in the harsh conditions of the Colosseum. But that doesn't excuse her making me bleed.

“Why did you do that?” I ask.

“There are several lessons there,” Lady Elara says. “The first is that we must learn not to lose ourselves when we join with the beasts. We must remember that we are the ones in control. Our minds are connected, and if we are not careful, something of the creatures we are linked with flows back along that connection. To anyone else, we will appear… quite mad.”

I realize that she has just saved me from that fate. From having my mind pulled in so many directions I could not cling onto it.

“Thank you,” I say.

“Do not mention it. As for the other lessons… remember that your connection can be broken if someone disrupts your concentration enough, and that if youarefocused entirely on other sets of eyes, you may not be able to see what’s coming. You could leave yourself vulnerable.”

I nod, acknowledging all of that, but I still have questions.

“There are other people down here; are they-”

“For now it is better if you do not know about them,” Lady Elara says. “They will be beast whisperers, but they are maintaining their privacy until they know more about you. We have agreed that I will proceed cautiously with you.”

“So you all work together? You all make decisions together?” I ask.

She spreads her hands. “Beast whisperers tend to do what they want to do. But yes, we agree amongst ourselves. And one of the things we have agreed is that I will not tell you too much before you are ready. That I will focus on training you. And you still have a long way to go.”

It feels as though I have accomplished quite a bit already. I have seen through the eyes of animals, pacified them, summoned them to my side.

“What else is there?” I ask.

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