Master Tristan Mace did not turn toward Tala.

            “All the Masters knew that Ravenblade would soon die,” he said quietly. “They just did not know when.”

            “But-“Tala began.

            “Tala,” Tristan Mace interrupted, “he knew death was near, too. He also knew that dying was not in your near future. He knew what he had to do.”

            “But he was my Master!” Tala exclaimed. “Don’t you even care?”

            He turned and gave her a reproving glance. “Yes,” he answered, “I do. Tala, we cannot dwell on the past and all that has happened in it. You know this, and you need to practice it.”

            Tala sank into a chair. “But he’s dead, Master Tristan! What am I going to do now?”

            Tristan Mace sighed and shook his head. Folding his hands behind his back, he looked at the ceiling as if it held the answer to every question anyone might ever have. “We will just have to find you a new Master.”

            “What Master will want a fifteen year old apprentice?” Tala queried.

            Tristan looked at her and smiled. “You’d be surprised.” He turned to the closed door and called out, “You can come in, Ksarkash.”

            The door opened and Master Ksarkash Athana stepped inside, shaking his head and smiling.

            “I just cannot surprise you,” he said.

            “You are but a new Master,” Tristan replied. “You still have things to learn.”

            Ksarkash leaned against the wall. “Why did you call for me?”

            “Of course, you have heard of the death of Master Ravenblade Ryuthan,” Tristan began.

            Ksarkash nodded. “The Temple is buzzing with the news.”

            Tristan gestured to Tala. “His apprentice, Tala Kione, is going to need a new Master.”

            Ksarkash’s eyes widened. “Master Tristan, I was just made a Master! Surely I am not ready-“

            Tristan held up a hand, and Ksarkash fell silent.

            “One of the challenges of being a new Master,” he said, “is learning to train an Apprentice. If you do not do well, you have to wait for five years. If you do well, you will have yourself an Apprentice. You learned this, Ksarkash.”

            Ksarkash nodded. “Yes, but I did not think of it until you reminded me. There were other things on my mind.”

            “You need to train yourself better to have a clear mind when you speak with someone on a topic of such importance,” Tristan said before turning to Tala. “What do you think, Tala? Would you like to have Master Ksarkash as your new Master?”

            Tala hesitated.

            Tristan added, “Or you could spend time with him and get to know him, seeing if you would get along well as Master and Apprentice.”

            Tala twisted her hands around in her lap. “I-I mean no disrespect, Master Tristan, but this was suggested too-“

            “Suddenly,” he finished.

            Tala nodded.

            “I understand,” Tristan answered gently. “You just lost your Master two days ago, and you want time to recover.”

            “Yes,” Tala said quietly, looking at her lap.

            “You can go to your room now,” Tristan said, placing a sympathetic hand on her shoulder.

            Tala nodded again and slipped out of the room.

 

            “Tala?”

            Tala looked up and saw her best friends, twins Shuthral and Chathel Narrel, standing in the doorway. “Yes?”

            Chathel came and sat beside Tala on her bed. “I’m sorry,” she said quietly. “I wish I could have been here to be with you right after it happened, but we were both on missions with our Masters.”

            Shuthral nodded as he leaned against the far wall. “I feel terrible,” he said, sighing. “I wish I could have been here to help. If we had all practiced in that room together, and faced them together we might have defeated Blackscar and his apprentice.”

            “We will find them,” Tala stated firmly, fighting to keep back her tears, “and we will have our revenge!”

            “Tala, no!” Chathel exclaimed. “You know that is against the rules of the Jetts.”

            Tala leaned back against the wall and pushed hair back from her face. “You’re right, but I can’t help but feel anger whenever I think about the people who killed Master Ravenblade.”

            “We all know that anger is natural, but we need to learn to control it,” Shuthral said quietly. “That is one of the foremost rules of the Jetts.”

            Chathel nodded. “I had so much trouble with anger when I was young,” the seventeen year old said softly. “But the Mighty One, Say-Aln, says that it is wicked and we need to ask him for help in controlling it.”

            “I know,” Tala replied, “but I find it so easy to just give in sometimes.”

            “We completely understand,” Shuthral told her. “Just talk to Say-Aln. He knows the solution to every problem that you have and will ever have.”
            “Yes,” Chathel agreed.

            They were silent for a few minutes before Shuthral spoke again.

            “Will you get a new Master?” he asked.

            “Yes,” Tala replied. “Master Tristan Mace made a proposal to Master Ksarkash Athana.” 

            Shuthral folded his arms and raised an eyebrow. “And what did Master Athana say?”

            “Well, he protested that he had just been made a Master, but Master Tristan reminded him that one of the challenges of being made a Master is learning to train an Apprentice in the way of the Jetts,” Tala explained.

            “But you’re already so advanced in training,” Chathel said. “Why, if you became a Master by the time you were twenty-two, I don’t think many people would be surprised.”

            Tala nodded. She was continually being recognized for her adept skills with blades and even more than that.

            “Yet, despite my advanced skills, I was not able to save my Master,” she pointed out.

            “But your destiny lay elsewhere,” Chathel said gently. “If you had stayed and tried to help Master Ravenblade, you would have died too. But Say-Aln had a different plan for you.”

            “What?” Tala asked. “What could he possibly want with me? Why would he care after he let my Master die?”

            Chathel and Shuthral glanced briefly at each other across the room.

            “He decided that it was time to let Master Ravenblade go,” Shuthral explained. “He wanted you to be able to trust him to do what is best for you.”

            “Master Ravenblade was very old. He lived a long and fulfilling life,” added Chathel. “He wanted to be able to rest forever.”

            Tala nodded. “He would often speak of that when I became his apprentice, but I never truly knew what he meant until after he was killed.”

            “Tala,” Shuthral said, putting a hand on her shoulder, “you’ll see. Everything will work out. It’ll be alright.”

           

            “Everything will be alright? I might have agreed with you then, but I don’t now!” Tala gritted out, her teeth chattering so much she thought they’d fall out.

            “Don’t rub it in now,” shivered Chathel. “Save it for after we die, ‘cause then we won’t have to worry about being stuck in a frozen wasteland.”

            Shuthral poked his head through the door of the improvised shelter that the trio had set up. “Doing any better in here?” he asked.

            “You’re kidding, right?” Tala asked. “A good deal of wind still gets in here.”        “You’re crazy to be out there in this weather!” Chathel exclaimed. “Get inside! At least the snow won’t get you here.”

            “What are you doing anyways?” Tala asked.

            “We’re out here to build up our endurance,” Shuthral replied.

            “So you think they expect us to build up our endurance in 15 degrees below Fahrenheit weather?” Chathel asked. “In a blizzard in a place we’ve never been before. Come on!”

            “Yeah, the visibility is about three inches, Shuthral,” Tala added. “Get in here!”

            Shuthral shrugged and stepped inside, letting his pack slide off his back before sitting. “Girls. They just can’t take anything.”

            “Excuse me?” Chathel exclaimed indignantly. “Who rescued you from the wolf in Skytheria? Who beat the heat of the Kavva Desert to save you? Who-“          

            “Okay, girls can’t take most things,” Shuthral said, holding up his hands in surrender. “Sorry!”

            Tala and Chathel looked at each other and rolled their eyes.

            “You can see now why I wanted sisters,” Tala said. “But unfortunately, I was stuck with four older brothers.”

            Shuthral shook his head as the trio fell silent.

            Tala looked up just in time to see a shadow pass by the tent behind Shuthral. She glanced nervously at each of the twins. “Umm…..what kinds of life forms are out here?”

            “Why do you ask?” Chathel wondered.

            “Just wondering,” Tala replied, but her face said otherwise.

            “There’s something out there, isn’t there?” Shuthral asked.

            Tala nodded. “Right outside the tent. It passed by you.”

            “Well…there’s the Yirruz. It’s an animal similar to a fox, but it hunts only small game, like mountain rabbits and squirrels,” Chathel began. “Then there’s the Vaskal dragon-“

            “Dragon?” interrupted Tala.

            Chathel nodded. “But it won’t attack unless it or its nest is threatened.”

            They cringed as an angry roar, even louder than the roaring wind of the blizzard, sounded.

            “Uh-oh,” they said simultaneously.

            “Uh, what else lives out here?” Tala asked quickly.

            “The chakata, a small mammal that lives in the snow, the chirru, a bird that eats the dead remains of corpses, animal and human, and the yitha, a member of the canine family with a lethal bite,” Shuthral replied just as quickly.

            “So it could be a yitha or a Vaskal dragon,” Tala said.

            “Or both,” Shuthral and Chathel said at the same time.

            “That’s even better.” Tala sighed. “So…who’s going to go out and check things out?”

            “When whatever’s out there is going to attack, I’d rather we all be together instead of one of us dying first, and leaving the other two to fend for themselves,” Shuthral stated.

            “Good point,” Chathel agreed.

            They all turned and watched closely the outside of the tent.

            It was Chathel’s turn to see a shadow-again by Shuthral. “They seem to have some kind of attraction to you,” she told her brother.

            Shuthral rolled his eyes. “Thanks.”

            “No, I’m serious!” Chathel exclaimed, and when the others looked at her, they saw that wasn’t kidding. “There’s something about you that draws them to you. That’s why we can’t see them over here.”

            Suddenly, she and Tala exchanged glances. Their faces got the same look at the same time and they grinned.

            “I’ve got a bad feeling about this,” he muttered.

            Chathel looked at him and smiled. “We have a plan,” she said. “And you’re the bait.”

            Shuthral groaned. “I knew it.”