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can't bear it, Jena. I can't bear to be separated from him. To not know if he's well or sick, alive or . . ." She couldn't bring herself to even say it. "These kids . . . They have no idea what waits for them there. They've never lived out of this village. Hestia's daughter is a joke. The girl paid no more attention to me than she did to any of her other instructors and she can barely sling steel. Tarius is as careless and reckless as his namesake without the natural gift, the strength, or the size. Ufalla, she's got a talent for steel just like her father, but she doesn't yet have the skill. They've not lived through what I had lived through by the time I was their age. They just don't get it. We fought because we had to. We fought so that they wouldn't have to."
    "But they want to, Tarius," Jena said gently. "Our son wants this. He will be miserable if you make him stay here."
    "He will be safe."
    "True, but were you ever happy being safe?"
    "I'm happy now."
    "Because you've had that adventure. We made our own way, Tarius, no one handed us our life and said here it is. He wants to make his own way. This is their time, Tarius, and you have to let them—him—have it."
"Is it that easy for you, for all of you to just let go of our son, our only child?"
    "We'll never let go of him, Tarius, and no it's not easy for me to watch him go. But I understand why he's going and so, my love, do you."
    Tarius nodded. "Fine, but if our son must go then we will go as well . . ."
    "He doesn't want us to go with him, Tarius. Jabone wants to be the hero of his own story. He doesn't want to spend his whole life in your rather large, all-encompassing shadow. You have to let him do this and you have to let him do this alone."
    "But I don't know how, Jena," Tarius cried. "I don't know how."
    * * *
    Jabone watched with baited breath as he saw his mothers walking back from the lake. He couldn't see by Tarius's expression what she might be thinking and his Katabull senses had yet to help him in determining her moods.
    She walked right up to him, not looking at him but at the ground. "So you're determined to do this thing?"
"Yes Madra."
    "In spite of the fact that you are ripping your poor mother's very heart from her chest?" she said, pointing at Jena. He saw Jena pop Tarius in the ribs with her elbow. His madra finally looked up at him and he could see then that she had been crying. "It won't be as easy as you think." He nodded silently. "You are going to a foreign land with foreign ways. True many of the new settlers are Kartik, but most are from the Jethrik and there are still many Amalites there. Their customs are very different from our own. Even now the Katabull are barely tolerated. It is hard to wipe out the prejudices of many generations in one. Living a soldier's life . . . it isn't easy. When it rains you will get wet. When it's cold . . . and it gets very cold there, you will be cold. When it's hot you will be hot. Hunger and pain will become your constant companions and people you care for . . . they will die, and you will watch their blood spill into the earth. Both my father and your mother's father died in the Jethrik at the hands of the Amalite scum." She spat. "Do not, I pray of you my son, make us grieve for you as well."
    She threw her arms around his neck then and held him tightly. Jabone felt the sting of his own tears. "I will not fail you, Madra. I will make you proud to call me son."
    She kissed him gently on the lips then stood back and looked at his face. "I was proud to call you son on the day that you were born, and I will be proud on the day that I die, just take care that you make sure that I go long before you." She released him and walked off towards the house. To his memory his madra had never cried openly in front of him. Jena looked up at him and took his hand. Her own tears fell freely now.
    "You have to understand, this is the hardest thing we've ever had to do." Her voice broke on a sob and he