DAS SCHICKSAL

German, "the fate"

And at once he went on with his burden, as though afraid that he might already have said too much in this country where the past was sharp splinters embedded in men's minds and an ill-judged word a false step in the dark. -- Richard Adams, Shardik

Once again Diarnlan and Karandren's magic put their metaphorical heads together. Sending Karandren back without his memories hadn't worked. What was left for them to try? They pondered it for a long time while Diarnlan and Karandren themselves got drawn into yet another pointless duel. Well, "pondered" wasn't quite the right word when they had no brains. They communicated mainly by sending feelings of confused hopelessness to each other until they came up with something they hadn't tried yet.

We should send Diarnlan back without her memories this time, they decided at last.

So that was just what they did. Diarnlan and Karandren yelped in surprised alarm as the world disintegrated around them while they were still mid-duel.

Diarnlan awoke with a headache and a curious pain in her hand and eye. She stared up at the ceiling while she waited for them to fade. I've forgotten something important, she thought. For a while she pondered this. Is it Mother's birthday today? That didn't feel right. Have I missed an exam? That still wasn't the answer. At last she remembered. I forgot to buy ink and sealing wax yesterday.

Even that didn't seem right, but she refused to waste any more time thinking about it. She had a potion to brew. Then she could go to the village, buy the ink and wax, and write her monthly letter to her parents. Well, it was supposed to be a monthly letter. In practice she rarely bothered writing more than once every three months. This time it was closer to four.

She got up. The room spun around her. The next thing she knew she was lying on the floor with a splitting headache.

I must be sickening for something, she thought in alarm.

She tried to remember if she'd met any obviously sick people recently. Instead her mind presented her with a chaotic blur of images that could only have come from half-forgotten nightmares. Giants, sharp teeth, staring eyes, and flashes of a thousand other alien things filled her mind. A sharp stabbing pain shot through her chest. The pain in her eye returned in full force. It felt like someone had driven a knife into both her eye and her chest.

Diarnlan grabbed the bedside table and pulled herself to her feet. She closed her eyes to stop the light hurting them even more. With one hand pressed against the wall, both for support and to tell where she was going, she staggered into the bathroom. She kept a supply of pain-killing potions in the cabinet ever since her attempts to build her own wardrobe had lead to a nasty cut. With her eyes still closed she opened the cabinet, grabbed the nearest one, and drank the vial's contents with only a brief grimace at its bitter taste.

Her headache and chest pain faded to a dull sense of discomfort. She stared at her reflection in the mirror as she waited for the room to stop swaying like a boat in rough weather. Goodness, she looked like she'd just seen a ghost. If she was just a little paler she'd look like a ghost herself. The feeling of forgetting something important returned in full force.

Diarnlan scowled at the mirror. Something was badly wrong here, and she didn't know how to fix it.

Someone knocked at the back door. "Diarnlan! Hellooooooo!"

Oh no. Now she had at least two serious problems, and she didn't know how to deal with either.

There was something eerily familiar about her sister's unwanted visit. It was almost as if Diarnlan had known it was going to happen. But if she'd known she would have made sure she wasn't home when the little pest arrived. Diarnlan pondered this for a minute. Then she shrugged and dismissed it as yet another of the weird things that were happening today.

Karandren awoke to the dreadful screeching of that gods-damned bell. He stared up at the ceiling as he considered the situation. Obviously he was back at the academy. That meant he was fourteen again, with all the magical and physical limitations that age brought. Worst of all, it meant he had to go through lessons again and -- in light of how abruptly his last life ended -- dodge assassination attempts from a certain person.

I need to get used to being short again, he thought.

He also needed to get out of the academy again, study dark magic again, maybe conquer Miavain again... Oh yes, and deal with those damn skrýszel again. He had a personal grudge against that one that electrocuted him.

Claaaaaang!

Karandren winced at the bell's awful noise. First he would have to do something about that. Then he could worry about all his other goals. He gathered all the magic he had. It wasn't nearly as much as he'd had as an adult. But it would do for this. He put all his strength into a spell meant to blow something up. Then he hurled it out the window and straight towards the bell.

The explosion rocked the whole academy.

It took the teachers a full half-hour just to realise the academy wasn't under attack. By that time they'd already herded all the students into the heavily-warded cellars and had to deal with several hundred frightened teenagers who wanted answers -- answers that the teachers couldn't give. Some of the braver ones ventured out to investigate. Minutes later they returned with the news that the school bell had exploded. Shards of it lay all over the courtyard. There was no clue to how or why.

Amidst all the chaos no one noticed until it was too late that they were missing one student. It was only when breakfast began -- a very late breakfast, and even more unappetising than usual -- that one of the teachers realised something was wrong.

"That chair isn't usually empty."

Horrified silence fell on the other teachers and the prefects close enough to hear. Everyone knew who usually sat in that chair. It was placed at the very end of the table, as far away from the other students as possible, and everyone else gave it a wide berth whenever possible. If any other chair had been empty they would have assumed its usual occupant was merely sitting somewhere else for a change. But that one? There was nowhere for its occupant to go -- or at least nowhere he would be welcome.

All the adults looked helplessly at each other. The prefects began to exchange whispers and furtive glances.

"He must have heard the explosion," said the Professor of Magical Theory. "Everyone knows to go down to the cellars when they hear something unusual."

The Assistant Teacher of Extinct Languages wrung her hands. "Maybe he was injured and couldn't move. Those shards of the bell were so large! And heavy!"

The Professor of Magic Music scoffed. "Him? Injured? His room's nowhere near where we found the shards. More likely he caused the explosion himself."

By now the headmistress had realised some new mayhem was brewing. She leaned forward so she could hear what her colleagues were discussing. Her eyes widened in horror. "Karandren's missing? Then we have to find him! At once!"

She picked a small group of teachers. They abandoned their breakfasts -- to the envy of their less lucky colleagues, who were unable to escape the disgusting food -- and went in search of Karandren.

If only they had known it they could have saved themselves the trouble. He was already far away from the academy, on his way to the closest part of the Miavain border.

For once Karandren did have a goal in mind. He had lived longest in the lifetimes when he reached Miavain and learnt dark magic. Therefore the best way to avoid an early death -- and Diarnlan, which was much the same thing -- was to go there as soon as possible. This time he had his memories intact. He knew how to conquer the place and what resistance to expect. None of the skrýszel had ever attacked Miavain before, so he'd be safe enough from them. It was the Bone-Worshippers he had to worry about now, and the priests in particular.

Hmm. In some ways he'd prefer the skrýszel.

It was over a hundred miles from the Laoivere Academy, in the north-eastern corner of the kingdom, to the border in the south. He had no money to take a coach or train. He could have hitched a ride for a few miles with some farmer taking produce to market. But if he did that he'd have to answer awkward questions. Questions like "where are your parents?", "how old are you?", and "why are you on your own?".

If he'd thought to steal some vegetables from the academy garden he could have pretended he was taking them to sell somewhere. Unfortunately he hadn't thought of that, so it was much better if he stayed away from adults who might get suspicious.

His inheritance from his mother wasn't only useful for accidentally-on-purpose drowning bullies. It was also very useful for catching fish. As a child Karandren had learnt how to lie very still on riverbeds and wait for fish to swim past him. Then he could grab one and swim up to the surface with it. When he first learnt how to do this his mother had been underwater with him to keep an eye on things. His father had waited on the bank, tending to the fire so they could cook whatever Karandren caught.

Back then he'd only ever managed to catch small fish that couldn't fight him too fiercely. Now he had more ambitious goals. At this time of year hoards of hulþárniszkr were migrating from the sea to the inland lakes. They were very large fish, often as long as a grown man's arm. One of them would be all the food he needed for his journey.

The fishermen had nets set up at narrow parts of the rivers. Karandren avoided those parts and instead searched for a wide, calm, and above all deep stretch of water. He found one in a place where the river ran through a chasm between two small cliffs. It was narrower than he could have liked, but at least the water was calm and flowed slowly. Beneath the surface he could see the glimmer of hulþárniszkr scales as the fish darted further upstream.

He didn't bother to check if there were any other supernatural creatures nearby. He dived in without a second thought.

A human who jumped into that icy water would have immediately had the breath knocked out of them. Probably their muscles would seize up so badly they wouldn't be able to swim to the surface. Karandren was only half-human. Until now he'd assumed he was immune to the cold. But never before had he been fully submerged in water quite this cold. He gasped. At once water flowed into his mouth and choked him. He struggled to the surface. For several minutes he coughed and wheezed. By the time he recovered enough to dive underwater again, all the fish were gone.

Damn it, Karandren thought. Now I have to wait.

He swam down, down, down until his hands touched the rocks on the bottom. He grabbed hold of the largest rock and clung to it as determinedly as a limpet. The sluggish current caught his hair and swept it back. Hopefully it would look like river-weed to the fish.

Karandren settled down on the rock. The sunlight cast weird patterns on the riverbed. It was hard to tell if a moving shape was a fish or just a weed waving in the current. He lay on top of the rock and wrapped his arms around it to make sure he stayed in one place.

A fish darted past his head. It was only a minnow, too small to be worth catching. Karandren waited for the larger fish to return. His fingers began to feel numb in the cold. He didn't dare move them in case he frightened off his prey again.

A shadow flitted overhead. He tensed, expecting to see a hulþárniszkr. But the creature was gone when he looked up. He couldn't see the sunlight reflect off its scales.

Sharp, stabbing pain shot through his back. The sunlight faded and took on a red haze in the suddenly cloudy water. Karandren instinctively tried to gasp. Water flowed into his mouth. Only his familiarity with swimming underwater helped him stay calm and hold his breath again. He pushed himself off the rock and twisted to see what had attacked him. A pike? An eel? Some other sort of fish with sharp teeth?

A mass of river-weed flew at his head. He dodged to the side. It abruptly stopped mid-charge and turned round. Now he saw it wasn't a plant at all. It was a mylblaur, a river creature with a body like a fish's, weed-like hair, and two long stick-like appendages that served as both arms and legs.

The mylblaur settled on the rock. Its seaweed-like hair stood out on end so that it appeared twice its size. It opened its mouth, displaying a ring of razor-sharp teeth. But it didn't charge at him again -- yet. It was just trying to frighten him away. He knew this as well as he knew that it would attack again if he didn't leave. The cuts on his back still throbbed dully.

Several facts ran through Karandren's head. Mylblaur were dangerous only to humans and creatures that couldn't breathe underwater. Their main prey was fish and small animals that went too close to the water's edge. Their teeth were sharp but they couldn't bite with much force. It was almost unheard-of for them to grow much larger than a spaniel. This one was smaller than that. Therefore it was not much of a threat to him when it didn't have the element of surprise.

During his miserable first year in Miavain Karandren had eaten anything he could get his hands on -- including rats, vegetables from other people's gardens, and left-over food thrown out of restaurants. He wasn't inclined to be picky about what he ate when he was hungry. And right now he was very hungry. His air was running out. The fish were long gone, scared off by him and the mylblaur. If he left now all his hunting would be for nothing and he wouldn't have anything to eat for the rest of the day.

Karandren feigned to swim towards the surface. As he expected the mylblaur advanced to make sure he left. He twisted and grabbed its hair before it realised what he was planning.

The creature lashed out at him with its long arms. One of them ripped through his shirt and cut his chest. Karandren ignored the pain. He pulled his prey closer to him so it would have more difficulty striking out again. Mylblaur were not meant for close-quarters fights. They sneaked up on their prey and attacked from a distance. This one continued to try to hit him. But now he was too close, so its arms swept uselessly through the water.

In desperation it opened its circular mouth and tried to bite him. Its teeth were meant to strip the scales off fish, not to break through human skin. It might as well have been a cat scratching him; painful, but not serious. Karandren ignored that pain too. He dragged the mylblaur even closer until he could sink his teeth into its neck.

That was another thing he'd learnt in Miavain. When you had no other weapons, it was possible to kill someone by biting them. You just had to bite with enough force and hold on for long enough.

The mylblaur's blood poured out of the wound. It filled the water around them until they seemed to be suspended in a cloud of red. The creature struggled frantically. Karandren kept a hold of its hair and never loosened his grip on its throat. Water got into his mouth and nose. He snorted and spluttered, but he remembered his mother's lessons about what to do when that happened. Don't breathe in and don't struggle too much. Stay calm and keep holding your breath. He doubted she'd ever thought her advice would come in handy in a situation like this one, but he followed her instructions.

At last the mylblaur's struggles grew weaker. Gradually it stopped moving entirely. Karandren held on it for a little longer just in case it was trying to trick him. He waited until the current carried the cloud of blood away. He waited until his lungs began to burn. Only then did he decide he'd waited long enough. He swam up to the surface and took deep breaths of the cold air. The shock of the air's temperature was almost as bad as the shock when he'd first jumped into the water.

Getting out of the river was much harder than getting into it. The walls of the chasm were too high for him to grab the edge and pull himself up. They were uneven enough that he could probably climb out by finding footholds. But how could he do that when his arms were full of the mylblaur's body?

Karandren floated at the surface and let the current carry him further downstream. It moved slowly enough that he could examine the walls for an easier place to climb out. After a while the current began to speed up. That was a bad sign. An unfamiliar river could be very dangerous.

He craned his head to see round a bend. There was a large rock jutting above the surface in the middle of the river. On either side of it the water poured down out of sight. A small waterfall, perhaps. It would be easy enough to climb onto the rock. The gaps at either side of it were far too narrow for him to be carried through them.

The current threw him against the rock with more force than he expected. He winced. After taking a minute to recover he tossed the mylblaur up on top of the rock. Then he clambered out after it.

By now Karandren was much too hungry to worry about finding wood for a fire. He settled on the rock, tore off the mylblaur's skin with his bare hands, and bit into its flesh.

An hour later he'd eaten his fill. The rest of the creature's meat was too tough and stringy to be worth saving for later. He threw its remains into the river. Then he knelt down, scooped up handfuls of water, and began to wash its blood off his face. Getting the blood out of his clothes was much more difficult. He took off his outer shirt and dunked it in the river. He was so preoccupied by wringing it out that he didn't notice he was no longer alone.

A twig snapped on the riverbank. Karandren looked up and found himself staring at Diarnlan.