Chalam Othworld's Arc

Chapter 2 of 3

The morning after Chalam took the boy, they walked the wall outside the Crossing gate. Chalam wanted a first lesson somewhere quiet. A binding lay buried in old stone nearby. His staff had pulsed near it the day before. He meant to teach the boy how to listen to that hum without fear. The boy walked ahead, dragging his stick in the dirt. Then he stopped. His head snapped toward the wall. His stick fell. "It's loud," the boy said. His voice shook. "Too loud." Chalam turned. The boy's face had gone white. His hands pressed against his ears, though the sound was not in the air. It was in his blood, the way it lived in Chalam's staff. The boy's knees buckled. He dropped into the dirt and curled tight. "Look at me," Chalam said. He knelt fast. "It can't touch you. It's shut in the stone." The boy did not hear him. His eyes rolled. His breath came in short pulls. Chalam had felt raw sensing once, when his staff cracked. It had taken his mind for two weeks. The boy had no staff to soak it up. He was taking all of it, bare. Chalam grabbed his own staff and drove it into the ground between the boy and the wall. The staff drew the signature toward itself. It gave a low, steady pulse. But the boy still shook. The staff alone was not enough. Chalam had to teach him to steady himself. He took the boy's cold hands and pulled them from his ears. "Feel my staff instead," Chalam said. "It hums too. Slow and even. Count it." The boy's eyes found his. "One," Chalam said, when the staff pulsed. "Two." He kept the boy's hands on the wood. The boy's mouth moved. Three. Four. His breath slowed to match. Boots crossed the ground behind them. Marco Valentino came from the gate, unhurried, his gold bracelet catching the light. He watched the boy count against the staff and did not rush to help. "Told you," Marco said. "His head's loud." "He hears too much," Chalam said. "He needs the staff to hold it, until he learns to hold it himself." Marco crouched. He looked at the boy, not at Chalam. "You're louder than the wall now, kid. That's good. Means you're winning." He said it plainly, then stood. The boy's shaking stopped. He kept his hands on the staff. Color came back to his face. He looked up at Chalam and grinned, the same grin from the day in the dirt. "It stopped screaming," the boy said. Chalam breathed out. The boy could be steadied. But only with the staff between him and the stone. Take the staff away, and the sensing would swallow him again. Chalam had one cracked staff and a boy who could not walk near a binding without it.