Free Kingdom of the Seven by Jon Land Page A

real-world real; a kind of compromise.
    Early’s revulsion for his consciousness was what caused him to become a vagrant. But the role evolved into the ultimate disguise. Wherever he went, wherever they brought him, he fit in. He could disappear without really disappearing at all, and that was good because becoming invisible took a great deal of energy, energy better saved for his Freeings.
    That’s what Early called what he did best. He used to know it was killing, but if all he was ridding his victims of were the consciousnesses that chained them to mediocrity, then he was actually doing them a favor.
    Freeing them.
    Early had Freed a man earlier that day. He had made himself not there when he did it so no one would see him.
    But someone did. Early saw the man and recognized him in the flash of sight he allowed himself before he made himself gone.
    The Indian …
    The Indian was one of the last memories he carried before
they gave him the power and the real world grew all fuzzy and misted over. When he had survived the fall off the ravine with two arrows stuck in him, he knew he had passed into a higher plane of existence. Great powers had saved him, great powers that were certain to expand beyond his wildest dreams inside him. A world was born only he was fit to inhabit. He let himself grow dirty on the outside while the rest of humanity grew soiled on the in, prisoners of their own consciousness and bodies.
    No matter. Given time, Early would be more than happy to free them all.
    He knew his great powers would serve a purpose, and waited for that purpose to be revealed to him. When the Others found him, he knew right away it would come from them.
    He did not work for them in the traditional sense of the word. He only performed an occasional Freeing when the need arose and then he disappeared once more. The fact that they always knew how to find him proved they could direct themselves anywhere, just as he could. The missions they selected for him, the subjects they selected for Freeing, were part of a much larger program he knew little, and cared nothing, about. He kept his special gifts secret even from them. No one who lived in real-world time could know about those, no one!
    But the Indian had known; the Indian had seen him, recognized him, looked at him, and known everything.
    Earvin Early sat crouched against the building, rocking himself now as he tried to send his mind to find the Indian. The Indian, though, must have known enough to put his psychic shields up, and the efforts of Early’s mind went for naught.
    Of course, Early hadn’t told the others about the Indian; he wouldn’t have even if he still spoke in the words of the many prisoners who needed Freeing. He spoke only in lines of poetry learned in the days before his wondrous changing. In doing so he never let his words give away his true self; the words he spoke were all other people’s.

    But the absence of words did not change things so far as the Indian was concerned. He relied on them no more than Early did, and Early was glad the afternoon had ended without their inevitable confrontation. Early knew fear only for those who saw him as he was.
    Earvin Early would wait for another time, another place. Twice their paths had crossed. They were certain to cross again.
    “What fates impose, that men must needs abide. It boots not to resist both wind and tide.”
    Early quoted Shakespeare out loud to the night and then returned to the inner reaches of his mind, where it was even darker.

CHAPTER 6
    “You understand why I have summoned you,” the man in formal priest’s robes said to the figures kneeling on either side of him, slightly offset so a slight twist of his gaze could capture both of them.
    The figures nodded, in unison.
    Unlike the priest, they were cloaked in the garb of a novice or a monk: brown robes stitched of scratchy burlap held at the waist by a rope belted as a sash. Their hoods threw dark shadows over the tops of their faces,