They piled their backpacks in the middle of the tree circle and spread a couple of extra blankets over them so they wouldn’t get drenched in case the weather indeed decided to take a nasty turn. Jarmin, the brave six-year-old who had been keeping up with his grown-up companions the whole day without even a peep, dozed off right there by the backpack pile. The others sat on the ground, leaning against the trees, or just sprawled on the grass.
Rainy forebodings aside, the evening was beautiful. Bala wholeheartedly enjoyed it. Orion, nervously chewing on a grass blade, kept looking around, still hoping to think of some solution to their shelter problem. Juel was doing the same, only in a less obvious way. In his relaxed but watchful state, he resembled a charga, the big cat Faizuls like so much. Pai and Kosta moved closer to Oasis to ask him for more stories. Lainuver sat beyond the circle, cross-legged, his back to the group, thinking of something personal that seemed to be troubling him way more than the incoming rain. Irin had walked away and was currently shooting birds with his bow. From time to time, a painful squeak reached the diadem shelter; the hunt was going well.
Milian happened to end up being all alone. Not that he minded it, though. To him, a bookish boy, that day had been a serious overdose of human interaction. He felt emotionally drained now and just wanted to be by himself for a while. Milian decided not to walk far away; leaning against a diadem tree behind the backpack pile and putting his hood on was enough.
There was a moment when he lifted his eyes to the cloudy sky grumbling above the thin purple-white crowns and a stray thought entered his mind: these slender diadem trees could make a fine roof if someone would tie them together. And if this someone would also cover that roof with several blankets, just like they did with the backpack pile…
Milian Raven liked the idea at once. He stood up, tried to bend one of the trees. Yes, the trunk was flexible enough! Now he just needed to get help. That meant addressing one of the leaders. Milian chose Orion at once.
“Orion? Orion!” Raven tugged at his sleeve.
“What’s up?” Orion yawned.
A brief explanation later, to everyone’s surprise, Milian and Orion grabbed two coils of rope from the backpack pile and started bending the trees. The rest of the team watched them with distrust at first but then they got it: they were going to sleep under a roof after all! Everyone joined the building process, even Juel. Little Jarmin, woken up by the commotion, found himself inside a beautiful living tent of branches and flowers.
Their spirits high again, the boys got back to lively talking, mostly about what to make for dinner. Juel left that matter to Bala who seemed to know a thing or two about cooking and actually making food taste nice.
A true Lifekeeper is always observant, even in little things. Especially in little things. And Juel was a true Lifekeeper. He noticed that Milian had brought his idea to Orion and not him. That would not do. It was time to start setting things right.
“Good job, man!” Juel patted Milian on the shoulder, hoping that the praise sounded as sincere as he wanted. “Just one thing: in the future, if you have something important to say, come to me first. Keeping the leader uninformed can be dangerous to the whole team.”
“Okay,” Milian shrugged. “Whatever you say…”
“Jarmin!” Juel turned to the little boy. “I want to apologise for that joke I made yesterday. It was stupid. Please, forgive me.”
He said no more, leaving his companions to their thoughts. While the whole gradient of moods and opinions was shifting and rearranging behind his back, Juel grabbed his backpack from the pile, unrolled his sleeping bag, and started preparing for the night. He knew he was doing the right thing now, both for the mission’s and his own sake. Juel had hated Sainar’s decision to send him on this very questionable journey with a bunch of children. Now, he had finally made peace with that.
“Those guys are not all that bad,” he told himself. “They’re all my brothers of the Order. They’re all warriors, even the youngest ones. Maybe even little Jarmin is worth something, we’ll see; he is a powerful ambasiath too, after all… As to me, my master has always said that I must learn to keep my pride in check. All right, I will. Trust can be powerful, so let’s make them trust their leader.”
The wayfarer soup the young Lifekeepers had for dinner tasted like a proper homemade meal with Bala’s spices and Irin’s birds thrown in. The rain did finally start and quenched the campfire but, luckily, the diadem tent turned out to be a good enough shelter that kept both water and wind away.
Soon, night swallowed the world outside the tent; rain swallowed the sounds that could warn you about a danger. From time to time, a cold water droplet or a wet purple-white petal fell from the tent’s roof on the boys sleeping below. Sleeping. Jarmin no longer felt safe among them when there was no one to look out for danger. He felt alone and painfully vulnerable now. The No Man’s Land with all the nightmarish creatures Oasis had been talking about that day was close. Even worse: Kosta had mentioned that some of them – moroks – can wander outside the unstable lands and attack travellers even beyond Firaska. What if one – or a whole pack of them! – was prowling about the grasslands or maybe even lurking outside the tent right now?
Jarmin sat and wrapped his blanket around himself, shivering. He was so scared already that Orion’s unexpected whisper had almost made him jump.
“Can’t sleep, Jarmin?” asked Orion and added, looking around, “Well, you’re not alone. Looks like we’re all awake.”
One after the other, the boys raised their shaggy heads and exchanged looks in the dark.
“I’ve never been so close to the No Man’s Land,” whispered Kosta. His voice sounded even worse now when the air was cold and damp. “I know that it’s a rare thing that some dark creature sneaks beyond Firaskian patrols but it’s not impossible.”
“Orion…” said Jarmin with a pitiful sniff. “What are moroks like?”
“Oh no, no scary stories in the nighttime!” answered Orion with a nervous laugh. “That would be bad for the team’s morale.”
“Okay… But maybe you can tell me a fun story then?”
The pure hope in little Jarmin’s voice was too touching for him to refuse.
“Well, I know some stories. They’re not as cool as Oasis’s are, of course…” said Orion.
He even yawned as a part of play-acting and it worked: the listeners’ interest spiced up now, everyone moved closer; Pai promptly cast a light spell to scare all the night fears away and create a proper storytelling atmosphere. The spell – Fiat-lux, as Pai named it – resembled a classic Liht only remotely. It was much more flammable; every droplet that fell onto it from the leaky roof went up in vapour with a sharp hiss as it would on a hot frying pan. Also, Fiat-lux was a rather unstable light source, it flickered like a candle in the wind. That only suited the story-time, though.
“How about a cool real-life story?” asked Orion. “Our Sainar is not the only one who remembers his family history three millennia into the past!”
“Ah, yes, Aranta said you’re a descendant of that pirate…” Lainuver tried to chime in but Orion frantically waved his hands. “I’ll get to that! Story first!”
***
Three thousand years ago, there lived a great pirate Ziga-Ziga. It’s unknown whether his ambassa or his talent was the reason, but no one could match him in his bravery and his cunning except his friend Orion the son of stars. Together, they raided ships. Together, they spent their bloody gold on deeds good and evil.
But it wasn’t only the joy of piracy